ome to help her out
when she didn't know where to turn.

Polly cleared off the deserted table--for once Joel had all the bread
and butter he wanted. Ben took some of Phronsie's medicine, and
crawled up into the loft, to bed; and quiet settled down on the little
household.

"Polly," whispered Ben, as she tucked him in, "it'll be hard buckling-to
now, for you, but I guess you'll do it."

MORE TROUBLE

"Oh, dear," said Polly to herself, the next morning, trying to get a
breakfast for the sick ones out of the inevitable mush; "everything's
just as bad as it can be! they can't ever eat this; I wish I had an
ocean of toast!"

"Toast some of the bread in the pail, Polly," said Mrs. Pepper.

She looked worn and worried; she had been up nearly all night, back and
forth from Ben's bed in the loft to restless, fretful little Phronsie in
the big four-poster in the bedroom; for Phronsie wouldn't get into the
crib. Polly had tried her best to help her, and had rubbed her eyes
diligently to keep awake, but she was wholly unaccustomed to it, and her
healthy, tired little body succumbed--and then when she awoke, shame and
remorse filled her very heart.

"That isn't nice, ma," she said, glancing at the poor old pail, which
she had brought out of the "Provision Room." "Old brown bread! I want to
fix 'em something nice."

"Well, you can't, you know," said Mrs. Pepper, with a sigh; "but you've
got butter now; that'll be splendid!"

"I know it," said Polly, running to the corner cupboard where the
precious morsel in the blue bowl remained; "whatever should we do
without it, mammy?"

"Do without it!" said Mrs. Pepper; "same's we have done."

"Well, 'twas splendid in Mrs. Henderson to give it to us, anyway," said
Polly, longing for just one taste; "seems as if 'twas a year since I
was there--oh, ma!" and here Polly took up the thread that had been so
rudely snapped; "don't you think, she's got ten of the prettiest--yes,
the sweetest little chickens you ever saw! Why can't we have some,
mammy?"

"Costs money," replied Mrs. Pepper. "We've got too many in the house to
have any outside."

"Oh, dear," said Polly, with a red face that was toasting about as much
as the bread she was holding on the point of an old fork; "we never have
had anything. There," she added at last; "that's the best I can do; now
I'll put the butter on this little blue plate; ain't that cunning, ma?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Pepper, approvingly; "it takes