hing to eat--"

"Well, Miss Kitty," burst in Fanny indignantly, "I don't know what _you_
calls nothing. I calls it a-plenty and running over; and if what's good
enough for us all isn't good enough for Mrs. Pike, well--"

"It is _good_ enough, Fanny," urged Kitty; "only, you see, we like it
and can eat it, but Aunt Pike can't. You know the last time she was
here she said everything gave her indigestion--"

"Them folks that is so afflicted," said Fanny, "should stay in their own
'omes, or the 'ospital. I'm sure master don't want patients indoors so
well as out, and be giving up the food out of his own mouth to them.
The bit of fish I've got for master I'm going to keep for master.
If anybody's got to have the indigestion it won't be him, not if I knows
it; he's had nothing to eat to-day yet to speak of, and if nobody else
don't consider him, well, I _must_," and with this parting thrust Fanny
left the kitchen to go to her bedroom.

Kitty longed to be able to depart to her room too, to lock herself in
and fasten out all the worries and bothers, and all thoughts of supper
and Aunt Pike, and everything else that was worrying. "I wish I had
stayed in the woods," she thought crossly; "there would be peace there
at any rate," and her mind wandered away to the river and the little
silvery bays, and the tree-covered slopes rising up and up, and she
tried to picture it as it must be looking then at that moment, so still,
and lonely, and mysterious.

"I'll see that it all looks nice, Miss Kitty," said Emily with unusual
graciousness. She felt really sorry for Kitty and the position she was
in, and having quite made up her mind to leave now that this new and
very different mistress had come, she was not only beginning already to
feel a little sad at the thought of parting from them all, but a lively
desire to side with them against the common enemy. She failed quite to
realize that her past behaviour had reconciled Kitty more than anything
to the "enemy's" presence, and made her coming almost a relief.
"I'll get Fanny to poach some eggs, or make an omelette or something.
Don't you worry about it."

Kitty, immensely relieved and only too glad to follow Emily's last bit
of advice, wandered out and through the yard towards the garden.
She felt she could not go back to the company of Aunt Pike again, for a
few moments at any rate.

Prue was standing with her head out of her window, anxiously wondering
where Jabez was with