earful eyes, "_do_ you think it is all true
that Timothy said this morning about their--their _starving_ at Coole?
Oh Kit, I can't bear to think he is _hungry_!"

"It is dreadful! I don't know what to think," says Kit. "If nobody will
sell them anything, I suppose they have nothing to eat."

At this corroboration of her worst fears, Monica dissolves into tears.

"I couldn't eat my chicken at lunch, thinking of him," she sobs. "It
stuck in my throat."

"Poor sweet love!--it _was_ dry," says Kit, expanding into the wildest
affection. She kisses Monica fondly, and (though you would inevitably
have suffered death at her hands had you even hinted at it) is beginning
to enjoy herself intensely. Once again this luckless couple look to
_her_ for help. She is to be the one to raise them from their "Slough of
Despond,"--difficult but congenial task! "Then you have been existing on
lemon tart and one glass of sherry since breakfast time?" she says, with
the deepest commiseration. "Poor darling! I saw it; I noticed you ate
nothing _except_ the tart. You liked that, didn't you?"

"I didn't," says Monica. "I _hated_ it. And I was a cruel, cold-hearted
wretch to _touch_ it. But it was sweet--and--I--it--somehow
disappeared."

"It did," says Kit, tenderly.

"Oh, Kit, help me!"

"You mean you want to take him something wherewith to stave off the
pangs of hunger," says the younger Miss Beresford, with that grandeur of
style she usually affects in moments of strong excitement, and with the
vigor that distinguishes her. "I see; certainly." She grows abstracted.
"There's a leg of mutton hanging in the larder, with some fowl, and a
quarter of lamb," she says, presently. "But I suppose if we took _them_,
Aunt Priscilla would put us in the hue and cry."

"It mustn't be thought of. No, no; think of something else."

"Bread, then. Ordinary, of course, very ordinary, but yet the staff of
life."

"I _couldn't_ take him anything so nasty as mere bread," says Monica, in
despair. "But, if cook would make us a cake----"

"A big one, with currants! The very _thing_!" says Kit, with decision.
"And she will never betray us. Reilly, in little affairs of this
kind,--though sadly wanting where soups are concerned,--is quite all she
ought to be."

"When will it be baked? He _must_ get it to-night," says Monica, who is
evidently afraid her lover, if not succored, will die of want before
morning.

"Leave all to me," says Kit, flitting away fr