and tossing her head. "I'm going to have five-o'clock tea 'fore you go.
There, I'm a lady, an' a swell one too, I'd have you know."

She ran over to the corner of the slatternly room, and set the doll on a
bed, over which were tossed the clothes in a dirty heap, Phronsie following
every movement with anxious eyes.

"Now she's my child, remember," she said, turning her sharp, black eyes on
the small figure huddled up on the floor, "as long as she stays here."

Then she hurried about, twitching a box out here and there from a cupboard,
whose broken door hung by one hinge.

"Here's my silver spoons--ain't they beautiful!" she cried, running up with
a few two-tined forks and a bent and battered knife. These she placed, also
the cracked cups, with great gusto, on the rickety table, propped for
support against the wall, as one of its legs was gone entirely and another
on the fair road to departure.

"'Tain't stylish to have yer table agin the wall," she broke out, "at a
five-o'clock tea; I know, 'cause I've peeked in the windows up on the
avenoo, an' I've seen your folks, too." She nodded over at Phronsie. "I
know what I'll do." She tossed her head with its black, elfish locks, and
darted off in triumph, dragging up from another corner a big box, first
unceremoniously dumping out the various articles, such as dirty clothes, a
tin pan or two, a skillet, an empty bottle--last of all, a nightcap, which
she held aloft. "Gran's," she shouted; "it's been lost a mighty long time.
Now I'm goin' to wear it to my five-o'clock tea. It's a picter hat, same's
that lady had on to your house once--I seen her." She threw the old
nightcap over her hair, tied the ragged strings with an air, and soon, by