can never
find your mother on an empty stomach!" She rose from the wheelbarrow,
as she spoke, and trundled it swiftly from the road to the bank of the
river, a short distance away. Here, in a sheltered nook, hidden from
the highway by a group of willows, she stopped. "We'll camp right here,
and I'll get you a dinner fit for a king or a duke, at the very least,"
she said cheerily. "Look what I have in my wheelbarrow!" She took a
basket from the top of it as she spoke.

Fidel was already looking in, with his tail standing straight out
behind, his ears pointed forward, and the hairs bristling on the back
of his neck. There, on some clean white sand in the bottom of the
wheelbarrow, wriggled a fine fat eel!

"Now I know why I didn't sell that eel," cried Granny. "There's always
a reason for everything, you see, my darlings."

She seized the eel with a firm, well-sanded hand as she spoke, and
before could spell your name backwards, she had skinned and dressed it,
and had given the remnants to poor hungry Fidel. "Now, my boy," she
said gayly to Jan as she worked, "you get together some twigs and dead
leaves, and you, Big Eyes," she added to Marie, "find some stones by
the river, and we'll soon have such a stove as you never saw before,
and a fire in it, and a bit of fried eel, to fill your hungry stomachs."

Immensely cheered, the children flew on these errands. Then Marie had a
bright thought. "We have some potatoes in our bundle," she said.

"Well, now," cried the little old woman, "wouldn't you think they had
just followed up that eel on purpose? We'll put them to roast in the
ashes. I always carry a pan and a bit of fat and some matches about
with me when I take my eels to market," she explained as she whisked
these things out of the basket, "and it often happens that I cook
myself a bite to eat on my way home, especially if I'm late. You see, I
live a long way from here, just across the river from Boom, and I'm
getting lazy in my old age. Early every morning I walk to Malines with
my barrow full of fine eels, and sell them to the people of the town.
That's how I happen to be so rich!"

"Are you rich?" asked Marie wonderingly.

She had brought the stones from the river, and now she untied her
bundle and took out the potatoes. Jan had already heaped a little mound
of sticks and twigs near by, and soon the potatoes were cooking in the
ashes, and a most appetizing smell of frying eel filled the air.

"Am I rich?" r