to let Leon taste kidney, and it made him blink when he got it
good.

"Well my soul!" he said. "No wonder father didn't want to feed that to
another man when mother isn't very well, and likes it! No wonder!"

Then he gave me a big bite of breast. It was sort of dry and
tasteless; I didn't like it.

"Why, I think neck or back beats that all to pieces!" I said in
surprise.

"Fact is, they do!" said Leon. "I guess the people who 'wish to choose
breast,' do it to get the biggest piece."

I never had thought of it before, but of course that would be the
reason.

"Allow me, Sister Stanton," said Leon, holding out a piece of thigh.

That was really chicken! Then we went over the backs and picked out
all the kidneys, and ate the little crusty places, and all the cake we
could swallow; then Leon fixed up the bag the best he could, and set it
inside an old cracked churn and put on the lid.

He said that would do almost as well as the cellar, and the food would
keep until to-morrow. I wanted to slip down and put it in the
Underground Station; but Leon said father must be spending a lot of
money right now, and he might go there to get some, so that wouldn't be
safe. Then he cleaned my face, and I told him when he got his right,
and we slipped from the back door, crossed the Lawton blackberry patch,
and went to the house from the orchard. Leon took an apple and broke
it in two, and we went in eating as if we were starving. When father
asked us where in this world we had been, Leon told him we thought it
would be so awful long before the fourth or fifth table, and we hadn't
had much breakfast, and we were so hungry we went and hunted something
to eat.

"If you'd only held your horses a minute," said father; "they were
calling you to take places at the bride's table."

Well for land's sake! Our mouths dropped open until it's a wonder the
cake and chicken didn't show, and we never said a word. There didn't
seem to be anything to say, for Leon loved to be with grown folks, and
to have eaten at the bride's table would have been the biggest thing
that ever happened to me. At last, when I could speak, I asked who had
taken our places, and bless your heart if it wasn't that mealy-faced
little sister of Peter's, and one of the aunts from Ohio. They had
finished, and Sally was upstairs putting on her travelling dress, while
the guests were eating, when I heard Laddie ask the Princess to ride
with him and Sally's othe