e meant to say.
She tried to bite it back but got it all mixed up with a little giggle.
She bit the giggle instead. It twisted her mouth like a bitter taste.

Our Uncle Peter looked very sympathetic.

"You ought to get away somewhere on a journey," he said. "There's
nothing like it as a tonic for the mind. Even if it's a place you don't
like very much it clarifies the vision so,--dissipates all one's minor
worries."

"--Minor worries?" said the Lady.

"Travel! Yes that's the thing!" said our Uncle Peter quite positively.
All in a minute he seemed to rustle with time tables and maps and smell
of cinders and railroad tickets. "Now there's Bermuda for instance!" he
suggested. "Just a month of blue waters and white sand would put the
roses back in your cheeks.--And Dicky--"

"Impossible," said the Lady.

"Or if Bermuda's too far," insisted our Uncle Peter. "What about
Atlantic City? Think how Dicky would enjoy romping on the board
walk--while you followed more sedately of course in a luxurious wheel
chair!--The most diverting place in the world!--Yes quite surely you
must go to Atlantic City!"

The Lady made a little gasp as though her Patience was bursted.

"You don't seem to understand," she said. "I tell you it's quite
impossible!"

"W-H-Y?" said our Uncle Peter. He said it sharply like a Teacher. It HAD
to be answered.

The Lady looked up. She looked down. She looked sideways. She wrung her
hands in her lap. Her face got sort of white.

"It isn't very kind of you," she said, "to force me so to a confession
of poverty."

"'Poverty'?" laughed our Uncle Peter. He looked around at the
furniture,--at the toys,--at the pictures. It was at most everything
that he looked around. He seemed to be very cheerful about it.

The Lady didn't like his cheerfulness.

"Oh I've always had a little for myself," she explained. "Enough for one
person to live very simply on. But NOW----? With this strange little boy
on my hands,--I--I intend to go to work!"

"Go to----work?" said our Uncle Peter. "WORK?" He said it with a sort of
a hoot. "Work? Work? Why, what in the world could YOU do?"

"I can crochet," said the Lady proudly. "And embroider. I can mend. I
can play the piano. And really you know I can make the most beautiful
pies."

"Apple pies," said our Uncle Peter.

"Apple pies," said the Lady. Like a handful of black tissue paper she
crumpled up suddenly in her chair. Her shoulders shook and shook. The
sound she