letcher, who had returned to the house, now reappeared bearing a tray of
eatables and drinkables.

What a good time the children had, with the sewing-table for a sideboard,
and the lap-table fixed firmly across Flossie's chair.

"Are you sure you aren't getting too tired, dear?" asked Miss Fletcher of
her invalid, doubtfully. "Wouldn't you rather the waitress poured?"

But Flossie declared she was feeling well, and Hazel looked up eagerly into
Miss Fletcher's eyes and said, "You know she can't get too tired unless
we're doing wrong."

"Oh, indeed!" returned the hostess dryly. "Then there's nothing to fear,
for she's doing the rightest kind of right."

When the table was set forth, two small plates heaped high with
bread-and-butter sandwiches, a coffee-pot and milk-pitcher of beaten egg
and milk, a tea-pot of grape juice, one dish of nuts and another of jelly,
the waitress's eyes spoke so eloquently that Flossie mercifully dismissed
her on the spot, and invited a lady of her acquaintance to the feast, who
immediately drew up a chair with eager alacrity.

Miss Fletcher seated herself again and looked on with the utmost
satisfaction, while the children laughed and ate, and when the sandwich
plates and coffee-pot and tea-pot and milk-pitcher were all emptied, she
replenished them from the well-furnished sideboard.

"My, I wish I was aunt Hazel's real little niece!" exclaimed Flossie,
enchanted with pouring from the delightful china.

"So do I wish I was," said Hazel, looking around at her hostess with a
smile that was returned.

When Hazel sat down to supper at home that evening, she had plenty to tell
of the delightful afternoon, which made Mr. Badger and Hannah open their
eyes to the widest, although she did not suspect how she was astonishing
them.

"I tell you," she added, in describing the luncheon, "we were careful not
to break that little girl's dishes. Oh, I wish you could see them. They're
the most be-_au_tiful you ever saw. They're so big--big enough for a
child's real ones that she could use herself."

"I judge you did use them," said uncle Dick.

"Well, I guess we did! Miss Fletcher--she wants me to call her aunt Hazel,
uncle Dick!" The child looked up to observe the effect of this.

He nodded. "Do it, then. Perhaps she'll forget and give you the dishes."

Hazel laughed. "Well, anyway, she said Flossie'd eaten as much as she
usually did in two whole days. Isn't it beautiful that she's going to get