her left hand, since her right was occupied with the plate.

"What a little barbarian you are, Nell!" laughed her father; but
he gave her a quick, annoyed glance. "Where is your right hand?"

She drew it slowly from behind and held out the cracked old plate.
"I thought perhaps you would give me some fowl too," she said--"just
a leg or a wing, or bit of breast would do."

The Captain's brow darkened. "What is the meaning of this? Pip
has just been to me, too. Have you nothing to eat in the
nursery?"

"Only bread and butter, very thick," sighed Nellie.

Esther suppressed a smile with difficulty.

"But you had dinner, all of you, at one o'clock."

"Boiled mutton and carrots and rice pudding," said Nell mournfully.

Captain Woolcot severed a leg almost savagely and put it on her
plate.

"Now run away; I don't know what has possessed you two to-night."

Nellie reached the door, then turned back.

"Oh, if you would just give me a wing for poor Meg--Judy had some
of Pip's, but Meg hasn't any," she said, with a beautiful look of
distress that quite touched Colonel Bryant.

Her father bit his lip, hacked off a wing in ominous silence, and
put it upon her plate.

"Now run away,--and don't let me have any more of this nonsense,
dear." The last word was a terrible effort.

Nell's appearance with the two portions of fowl was hailed with
uproarious applause in the nursery; Meg was delighted with her
share; cut apiece off for Baby, and the meal went on merrily.

"Where's Bunty?", said Nell, pausing suddenly with a very clean
drumstick in her fingers, "because I HOPE he hasn't gone
too; someway I don't think Father was very pleased, especially
as that man was there."

But that small youth had done so, and returned presently
crestfallen.

"He wouldn't give me any--he told me to go away, and the man
laughed, and Esther said we were very naughty--I got some
feathered potatoes, though, from the table outside the door."

He opened his dirty little hands and dropped the uninviting
feathered delicacy out upon the cloth.

"Bunty, you're a pig," sighed Meg, looking up from her book.
She always read at the table, and this particular story was
about some very refined, elegant girls.

"Pig yourself all of you've had fowl but me, you greedy things!"
retorted Bunty fiercely, and eating, his potato very fast.

"No, the General hasn't," said Judy and the old mischief light
sprang up suddenly into her dark eyes.

"Now