"I think her aunt is, too!"

"Well, perhaps--I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the--aunt--ought--to."

"My dear!--Felicia!"

"I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you
had seen her--What do you think she was doing when I got there?"

"Crying?"

"Crying! She was laughing. _I_ cried. She sat there under some
grapevines watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name,
I think, is Thomas Jefferson."

"Yes, Thomas Jefferson," agreed the minister, with the assurance of
acquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners.

"Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voice
you ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good.' He was
eating raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're
VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me."

"Well?"

"Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow
somebody must go there and interfere."

"She must be a remarkably strange child," the minister mused.
He was thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he