"No, not that I see," replied the little girl meekly. Never had she
felt so crushed and unhappy. She was to look after the house for
her mother and father, and now this had to happen!

"But the spectacles?" snapped Agrippa. "They must have dropped,
too?"

"No," said the girl, "there are no spectacles here." Suddenly a
faint hope sprang up in her. What if he couldn't do anything to the
clock without his glasses? What if they should be lost? And just
then her eye lit tin the spectacle-case, behind a leg of the table.

The old man rummaged and searched among the cog-wheels and springs
in his bundle. "I don't see but I'll have to get down on the floor
myself, and hunt," he said presently. "Get up, crofter-brat!"

Quick as a flash the little girl's hand shot out and closed over
the spectacle-case, which she hid under her apron.

"Up with you!" thundered Agrippa. "I believe you're lying to me.
What are you hiding under your apron? Come! Out with it!"

She promptly drew out one hand. The other hand she had kept under
her apron the whole time. Now she had to show that one, too. Then
he saw the huttered bread.

"Ugh! It's buttered bread!" Agrippa shrank back as if the girl were
holding out a rattlesnake.