miniature fist in the direction her aunt had
taken, Lucy turned to attack the duties before her. She washed the dishes
and put them away; tripped upstairs and kneaded the billowy feather beds
into smoothness; and humming happily, she swept and polished the house
until it shone. She did such things well and delighted in the miracles her
small hands wrought.

"Now for the eggs!" she exclaimed, opening the pantry door.

Yes, there were the empty cases, and there on the shelf were the eggs that
waited to be packed,--dozens of them. It seemed at first glance as if
there must be thousands.

"And she wouldn't let me have one!" ejaculated the girl. "Well, I don't
want them. But I'm going to have an egg for breakfast whether she likes it
or not. I'll buy some. Then I can eat them without thanks to her. I have a
little money, and I may as well spend part of it that way as not. I
suppose it will annoy her; but I can't help it. I'm not going to starve to
death."

During this half-humorous, half-angry soliloquy, Lucy was packing the
eggs for market, packing them with extreme care.

"I'd love to smash them all," she declared, dimpling. "Wouldn't it be fun!
But I won't. I'll not break one if I can help it."

The deft fingers successfully carried out this resolution. When Ellen
returned from the garden at noontime, not only was the housework done, but
the eggs were in the cases; the clothes swaying on the line; and the
dinner steaming on the table. She was in high good humor.

"I forgot to ask you what you had planned for us to have this noon,"
explained Lucy. "So I had to rummage through the refrigerator and use my
own judgment."

"Your judgment seems to have been pretty good."

"I'm glad you think so."

"The Websters always had good judgment," the woman observed, as she
dropped wearily into a chair. "Yes, you've got together a very good meal.
It's most too good, though. Next time you needn't get so much."

Lucy regarded her aunt mischievously.

"Probably if I'd been all Webster I shouldn't have," she remarked
demurely. "But half of me, you see, is Duquesne, and the Duquesnes were
generous providers."

If Ellen sensed this jocose rebuke, she at least neither resented it nor
paid the slightest heed to its innuendo.

"The Duquesnes?" she questioned.

"My mother was a Duquesne."

"Oh, she was?"

"Didn't you know that?"

"Yes, I reckon I did at the time your father married, but I'd forgot about
it. Thomas an' I di