derments of the
morning deepened with every passing half hour.

What happened? Dear me, what _didn't_? Inexperienced Eurie, who rarely
had the family bread left on her hands, went to mixing it before getting
baking tins ready, and Sallie left her dishes to attend to it, and
dripped dish-water over them and the molding-board and on Eurie's clean
apron, in such an unmistakable manner, that the annoyed young lady
washed her hands of dough and dumped the whole pile of tins
unceremoniously into the dish-water.

"They are so greasy I can't touch them!" she said in disdain, "and have
drops of dish-water all over them, and besides here is the core of an
apple in one. I wonder, Sallie, if you eat apples while you are washing
the dishes! Put some wood in the stove. Jennie, can't you come here and
wipe these dishes? We won't get them out of the way before mother comes
home."

Jenny appeared at the door, book in hand.

"How can I leave the baby, Eurie? Robbie says he can't play with him--he
feels too sick. I think something ought to be done for Robbie; his
cheeks are as red as scarlet."

Whereupon Eurie left dishes and bread and went in to feel of Robbie's
pulse, and ask how he felt, and get a pillow for him to lie on the
lounge; and the baby cried for her and had to be taken a minute; so the
time went--time always goes like lightning in the kitchen on Monday
morning. When that bread was finally set to rise, Eurie dismissed Sallie
from the dish-pan in disgust, with orders to sweep the room, if she
could leave her apple long enough.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI.

DISTURBING ELEMENTS.

THE next anxiety was the baby, who contrived to tumble himself over in
his high chair, and cried loudly. Eurie ran. Dr. Mitchell was always so
troubled about bumps on the head. She bathed this in cold water, and in
arnica, and petted, and soothed, and pacified as well as she could a
child who thought it a special and unendurable state of things not to
have mamma and nobody else. Between the petting she administered
wholesome reproof to Jennie.

"If you hadn't been reading, instead of attending to him this would not
have happened I wish I had told mother to lock up all the books before
she went. You are great help; worth while to stay from school to bury
yourself in a book."

"I haven't read a dozen pages this morning," Jennie said, with glowing
cheeks. "He was sitting in his high chair, just as he always is, and