"What a little barbarian you are, Nell!" laughed her father; but
he gave her a quick, annoyed glance. "Where is your right hand?"

She drew it slowly from behind and held out the cracked old plate.
"I thought perhaps you would give me some fowl too," she said--
"just a leg or a wing, or bit of breast would do."

The Captain's brow darkened. "What is the meaning of this? Pip
has just been to me, too. Have you nothing to eat in the
nursery?"

"Only bread and butter, very thick," sighed Nellie.

Esther suppressed a smile with difficulty.

"But you had dinner, all of you, at one o'clock."

"Boiled mutton and carrots and rice pudding," said Nell mournfully.

Captain Woolcot severed a leg almost savagely and put it on her
plate.

"Now run away; I don't know what has possessed you two to-night."

Nellie reached the door, then turned back.

"Oh, if you would just give me a wing for poor Meg--Judy had some
of Pip's, but Meg hasn't any," she said, with a beautiful look of
distress that quite touched Colonel Bryant.