door. "I told her what time supper was, and now she will have to
suffer the consequences. She may as well begin at once to learn
to be punctual. When she comes down she may have bread and milk
in the kitchen."

"Yes, ma'am." It was well, perhaps, that Miss Polly did not
happen to be looking at Nancy's face just then.

At the earliest possible moment after supper, Nancy crept up the
back stairs and thence to the attic room.

"Bread and milk, indeed!--and when the poor lamb hain't only just
cried herself to sleep," she was muttering fiercely, as she
softly pushed open the door. The next moment she gave a
frightened cry. "Where are you? Where've you gone? Where HAVE you
gone?" she panted, looking in the closet, under the bed, and even
in the trunk and down the water pitcher. Then she flew
down-stairs and out to Old Tom in the garden.

"Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, that blessed child's gone," she wailed. "She's
vanished right up into Heaven where she come from, poor lamb--and
me told ter give her bread and milk in the kitchen--her what's
eatin' angel food this minute, I'll warrant, I'll warrant!"

The old man straightened up.

"Gone? Heaven?" he repeated stupidly, unconsciously sweeping the
brilliant sunset sky with his gaze. He stopped, stared a moment
intently, then turned with a slow grin. "Well, Nancy, it do look
like as if she'd tried ter get as nigh Heaven as she could, and