to occur to her to eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of
all the dainties she got together wistfully. At nightfall the
second day she began to feel real alarm. She put on her bonnet and
went to the minister's. He was rather a new minister, and the
Plummers had always required a good deal of time to make
acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need Aunt Olivia
did not stop to think of that.

"You must come over and--and do something," she said, at the
conclusion of her strange little story. "It seems to me it's time
for the minister to step in."

"What can I do, Miss Plummer?" the embarrassed young man ejaculated,
with a feeling of helplessness.

"Talk to her," groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. "Tell her what
her duty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's
got to do is to take just one stitch to show her submission. It
won't take but an instant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen
table--I don't care if it's ten o'clock at night!"

"It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children!" fumed the minister's kind
little wife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal
with little Rebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by
and by, red-eyed and fierce.

"You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert.
That poor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!"