had a half-ownership in.

"I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty
years old, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age.
Perhaps if her mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets,
or learned to knit and darn and cook--" The minister's kind little
wife finished out her sentence with a sigh. She took up a little
garment in dire straits to be mended. It suggested things to the
minister.

"Can Rhoda darn?"

"RHODA!"

"Or make sheets and bread and things?"

"Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?" But the laugh in
the pleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay
too heavy on the minister's wife's heart for mirth.

Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night.
She had been in three times before.

"She looks thinner than she did last time," Aunt Olivia murmured,
distressedly. "Tomorrow night--how long do children live without
eating? It's four meals now--four meals is a great many for a
little thin thing to go without!" Aunt Olivia had been without four
meals too; she would have been able to judge how it felt--if she had
remembered that part. She stood in her scant, long nightgown,
gazing down at the little sleeper. The veil was down and her heart