at her in amazement, but she was helping herself to boiled
dandelion at the time, and made no further explanation.

"Why, Tish!" Aggie exclaimed.

"Aggie," she observed, severely, "if you would only remember that the
world is hungry, you would eat your crusts."

"I ate crusts for twenty years," said Aggie, "because I'd been raised to
believe they would make my hair curl. But I've come to a time of life
when my digestion means more to me than my looks. And since I've had the
trouble with my teeth----"

"Teeth or no teeth," said Tish, firmly, "eating crusts is a patriotic
duty, Aggie."

She was clearly disinclined to explain about the farm, but on being
pressed said she had sent the tenants away because they kept pigs, which
was absurd and she knew it.

"Isn't keeping pigs a patriotic duty?" Aggie demanded, glancing at me
across the table. But Tish ignored the question.

"What about the church?" I asked.

Tish has always given the farm money to missions, and is therefore
Honorary President of the Missionary Society. She did not reply
immediately as she was pouring milk over her cornstarch at the time, but
Hannah, her maid, spoke up rather bitterly.

"If we give the heathen what we save on the table, Miss Lizzie," she
said, "I guess they'll do pretty well. I'm that fed up with beans that
my digestion is all upset. I have to take baking soda after my meals,
regular."

Tish looked up at her sharply.

"Entire armies fight on beans," she said

"Yes'm," said Hannah. "I'd fight on 'em too. That's the way they make me
feel. And if a German bayonet is any worse than the colic I get----"

"Leave the room," said Tish, in a furious voice, and finished her
cornstarch in silence.

But she is a just woman, and although firm in her manner, she is
naturally kind. After dinner, seeing that Aggie was genuinely
disappointed about the excursion to the farm, she relented and observed
that we would go to the farm as usual.

"After all," she said, "chestnuts are nourishing, and might take the
place of potatoes in a pinch."

Here we heard a hollow groan from the pantry, but on Tish demanding its
reason Hannah said, meekly enough, that she had knocked her crazy bone,
and Tish, with her usual magnanimity, did not pursue the subject.

There was a heavy frost that night, and two days later Tish called me up
and fixed the following day for the visit to the farm. On looking back,
I am inclined to think that her usual enthusiasm wa