ts all spoiled the day, the day!"

This reminded the lad that he was hungry. He had been hard at work all
day in the underground passage, the third and last of those he had set
out to make beneath "Charity House." The first two had been completed,
the walls shored, the rich beds for mushroom-raising made upon the dark
damp floors. Already these beds were dotted with the white growths, that
in a marvellous short time would be full-grown mushrooms and finding a
place upon many an epicure's table.

That very hour, even, Frederic Kaye was in the city negotiating for
their regular sale at profitable prices; and wondering not a little, it
may be, at the strange fact that "Spite House," instead of being the
barren, unproductive spot at first supposed, would prove instead a
veritable mine of support to the whole household. Of that other
"mining," with its anticipated results in gold of which Fayette had
sometimes babbled, Mr. Kaye took no account. Old Jacob Ingraham who
built the house had been a hard, close-fisted man, if all accounts were
true, and not at all likely to deposit his money in the ground, when
there were investments which would help to increase it. But of old
Jacob's wife, history said little, and Frederic never thought.

Fayette placed the apron in the cupboard, as he had been bidden, and
when he would have added the broken box also, Cleena prevented.

"Oh, ye dirty boy! That--that mouldy, muddy, nasty thing! No, no! No,
no!" and she tossed it unceremoniously into the box of kindling-wood.
In the roomy "Dutch" oven in the wall she had baked many of her picnic
biscuits, and she regarded the ruin Fayette had wrought among her
sandwiches with an air absurdly sad.

Now he had no scruples against a bit of dirt, and had already crammed
his mouth full of the broken food, when Cleena looked round and saw him.
His mouth was distended with laughter as well as bread, and this
provoked her still further. Sweeping her long arm over the table, she
brushed all the sandwiches into a big pan that stood conveniently near,
and remarked grimly:--

"Not another bite o' better food do you get till them's all ate."

"All right. I like 'em. But what's the picnickers goin' to do?"

"The best they can. An' you're to help. Go wash your hands."

"I have."

"Again, once more; then show 'em to me."

The lad laughingly obeyed. Then demanded:--

"What for?"

Cleena replied by action rather than word. She tied a fresh gingham
ap