n her lips.

"They're gone, every one of 'em," she announced with feigned regret. "But
it ain't any matter. You can have all, the eggs you want anytime you want
'em. I ain't so poverty-stricken that we can't have eggs--even if they are
sixty-six cents a dozen."

She got a cloth and began to wipe up the unsightly mass at her feet.

"I paid sixty-seven cents for those," Lucy said.

"Sixty-seven cents! How long have the Howes been gettin' sixty-seven cents
for their eggs, I'd like to know?" Ellen demanded, springing into an
upright position.

"I couldn't say. Jane told me that was the regular market price."

"Why didn't I know it?" her aunt burst out. "They must 'a' gone up a cent,
an' I sellin' mine at the store for sixty-six! Ain't it just like that
meachin' Elias Barnes to do me out of a penny a dozen, the skinflint."

In the face of the present issue, the battle between Howe and Webster was
forgotten.

To be cheated out of a cent by Elias Barnes and at the same time to have
her business ability surpassed by that of Martin Howe! No indignity could
have equaled it.

"Well, I'll get even with Elias," she blustered. "I'm fattening some hogs
for him, an' I'll tuck what I've lost on the eggs right on to 'em. He
shall pay that cent one way or 'nother 'fore he gets through. He needs to
think to beat me. Sixty-seven cents, and I never knowin' it!"

Then the words brought still another bitter possibility to the woman's
mind.

"You didn't mention to the Howes I was gettin' only sixty-six cents a
dozen for eggs, did you?" she asked, wheeling on Lucy.

"No, I didn't speak of price."

"That's good," said her aunt, slightly mollified. "At least Martin Howe
can't go crowin' over me--that is, unless Elias Barnes tells him. 'Twould
be exactly like Elias to do it. He is just that mean."

Although Ellen did not own it, Lucy knew that had the case been reversed,
she would have been the first to crow unhesitatingly not only over Elias
but over Martin. Pityingly she looked at the old woman.

"If you ever get the chance to speak to those Howe women again," her aunt
concluded, with affected nonchalance, "you might tell 'em we never used
their eggs. You could say I smashed 'em. I'd like Martin Howe to know it."

CHAPTER VI

ELLEN ENCOUNTERS AN ENIGMA

Nevertheless, in spite of this bellicose admonition, Lucy had no
opportunity during the next few weeks to deliver to the Howes her aunt's
message, for Ellen, feeling