ge do for eight buckwheat cakes. Wasn't
that economical?"

Even Cousin Molly Belle laughed, the "aside" being more audible than I
meant to have it. True, she hugged me the next minute, her chair being
next to mine on the other side, but her eyes were lively with amusement,
and I saw that she was ready to break out again.

My poor dainty mother actually blushed. It was not fashionable then for
ladies, and little girls who were going to be ladies, to have hearty
appetites. School-girls were instructed that no well-bred young lady
ever ate more than two biscuits at breakfast or supper, and one was more
refined than two. The pinion of a partridge sufficed the Lydia Languish
of that day for the meat course of a dinner, and to be hungry was to be
coarse. My mother was a sensible matron who did not lean to extreme
views on any subject, but she did not rise superior to a mortification
such as this. When she said distressfully:--

"Molly! Eight cakes! I am ashamed that you should be so greedy!" I
comprehended that my offence was rank, and that not her taste alone, but
her sensibilities, suffered.

I got hot all over, as was my custom when self-convicted of sin, and sat
abashed, appetite and spirits put to flight together.

My father pulled his face straight.

"Never mind this time, mother! Better pay meat bills than doctor's
bills. And, on a cold day, a restless little body like hers needs a
great deal of carbon to keep the fires going. Eight buckwheat cakes and
a thumping big sausage represent just so much animal heat."

By and by, when I got a chance to speak to him alone, I asked him what
carbon was, and what he meant by the fires and animal heat. He was at
work at his table in "the office" in the yard, the Mortons having gone
home, but he put down his pen and talked to me for quite a while upon
nutrition and food values. He did not use those terms. They had not come
into vogue even with medical men and writers upon anatomy. Still, his
simple lecture made me comprehend that what I ate kept me alive and warm
and active, and how certain kinds of food made blood, and others,
muscle, and others were of little or no use in keeping up animal heat,
without which there could be no life.

I asked him if we could keep a dead thing warm if it would come to life
again. I was thinking of all my dead pets. It was pathetic,--the
familiarity of a seven-year-old with death and dissolution,--but of this
I was not aware.

He answered