"Are you there?" said Miss Sally.

"Yes ma'am," was the answer, in a weak voice.

"Go further away from the leg of mutton, or you'll be picking it, I
know," said Miss Sally.

The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass opened the safe, and
brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as
Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, and then, taking
up a great carving-knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it.

"Do you see this?" she said, slicing off about two square inches of cold
mutton, and holding it out on the point of a fork.

The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see
every shred of it and answered, "Yes."

"Then don't you ever go and say," retorted Miss Sally, "that you hadn't
meat here. There, eat it up."

This was soon done.

"Now, do you want any more?" said Miss Sally.

The hungry creature answered with a faint "No." They were evidently
going through an established form.

"You've been helped once to meat," said Miss Brass, summing up the