needle. "How can you be hungry when you ate your breakfast not two
hours ago?" she added with the intent to beguile him from his
demand.

"All gone, thank ma'am, please," he answered, looking out from under
his curl with a pathetic cast of his blue eyes, and at the same time
spreading both hands over his entire vital region.

"I reckon maybe we'd better fill him up again," said Mother. "Them
legs still look 'most too much like knitting-needles to suit me, and
I kinder want to feel him to be sure his stomick haven't growed to
his backbone. Anyway, you can't never measure a boy's food by his
size. Please run and get him a glass of buttermilk and a biscuit,
child, while I finish setting in this sleeve. Let me see them
britches legs 'fore you put 'em down. Dearie me, if you ain't gone
and made 'em both for the same leg! Too bad, with all them pretty
baste-stitches!"

"Oh!" gasped Miss Wingate in dismay; "have I ruined them?"

"No, indeed, just turn the left leg inside out and hem it up again--
or you might make two more right legs to sew on to these. It would
be a good thing to double one failing mistake up into two successes,
wouldn't it? Often bad luck turned inside out makes a cap that fits
plumb easy. While you fill the boy up, I'll cut out his other legs
for you to baste right this time. Take a peep around the garden
before you come back to see if Spangles have got her chickens in the
wet weeds. I hadn't oughter let her pretty feathers make me distrust
her, but it do." And Mother went placidly on with her sewing as she
watched the girl and the tot go hand-in-hand down the path to the