"I will give you a
small grocery order twice a week. You can manage with that?"

"Oh, yessum, splendid, and thank you kindly, ma'am," said Mrs. Callahan.
"Don't put down meat--just a little piece onct a week so's not to forget
the taste. And a leetle mite coffee. Put in mostly fillin' things--rice
and beans and dried apples. You got to cram seven hearty children.
Thank'e, thank'e, ma'am. Peggy, give the little lady some roses, the
purtiest ones where the frost hasn't nipped 'em."

While Miss Margery talked with Mrs. Callahan, Anne was getting
acquainted with the children. She chattered gleefully about them on her
homeward way. "Peggy says a lady her mother sews for gave them a lot of
clothes. Peggy has a pink velvet waist and a red skirt, and her mother
has a lace waist and a blue skirt with rows and rows of blue satin on
it. They're very int'resting children, Miss Margery, but do you think
they always tell just the very exact truth?" asked Anne.

"I'm afraid they do not. I'm afraid their mother doesn't set them a very
good example," answered Miss Margery who knew the Callahans of old.

"Peggy says it isn't harm to tell a fib that don't hurt anybody," said
Anne.

"I hope you told her it was."

"Yes, Miss Margery. I told her we thought it was low-down to tell
stories. And Peggy just laughed and said they wouldn't act so stiff as
to tell the truth all the time.--Miss Margery, when are you going there
again? I do want to go with you. The baby has a new tooth coming. You
can feel it. I want to see it when it comes through. May I go with you
another Saturday?"

"Perhaps."

CHAPTER XXVI

Two weeks passed. Peggy or John Edward or Elmore came duly on Wednesdays
and Saturdays for the grocery orders and reported that the family was
getting on "elegant" or "splendid." One Friday afternoon, a neighbor of
the little brown house flounced into the office.

"It's my dooty to come to you, lady," said Mrs. Flannagan, "and I does
my dooty when it's hard on other folks. You wouldn't give me a bit of
groceries last week, but they tell me you rain down grocery orders on
Mrs. Callahan, and she spendin' money like she was President Bill Taft
or Johnny Rockefeller."

"What do you mean, Mrs. Flannagan? Please explain," said the
long-suffering Charity lady.

"I mean this," said Mrs. Flannagan. "With my own two eyes I seen 'em
yestiddy afternoon--Mrs. Callahan and them four biggest children walkin'
down the street like a ra