“Well, I reckon you won’t see me here next time you comes home,” said Fanny, trying hard not to look pleasant; “and as for this ’dear old kitchen,’ as you call it—­dear old barn, I call it, with its draughts and its old rough floor—­it isn’t never no credit to me, do what I will to it, and Mrs. Pike is always going on at me about the place.  I says sometimes I’ll give up and let it go, and then some folks’ll see the difference.”

Kitty remembered the time when Fanny, not so many months back, had let it go, and she had seen the difference.  But she said nothing, and munched contentedly at her nubby; and Fanny, who really loved her big, homelike old kitchen almost as well as she did the children, continued to talk.

“I wish Jabez would come in,” said Dan.  “He used to love hot cake, and I have hardly had a chance to say anything to him since I came.”

“Nobody gets a chance to nowadays,” said Fanny sharply.  “He gets his head took off—­not by me—­if he so much as sets foot inside these doors; and Jabez isn’t partial to having his head took off.”

“I should think his foot should be taken off, not his head,” giggled Betty; but no one but herself laughed at her joke.

Kitty, who had been sitting on the corner of the table which stood in the window, munching her nubby and thinking very busily, suddenly looked up, her face alight with eagerness.

“Fanny,” she cried, “don’t you want to do something very, very nice and kind and—­and lovely, something that would make us all love you more than ever?”

Fanny glanced up quickly; but as she was always suspicious that some joke was being played on her, she, as usual, made a cautious answer.  She was not going to be drawn into anything until she knew more.  “Well, I dunno as I wants to do more than I’m doing—­letting ’ee eat my cake so fast as I bakes it.”

“But, Fanny, listen!” Kitty was so eager she scarcely knew how to explain.  “You know that Aunt Pike and Anna are going out this evening?”

“Yes, miss,” with a sigh of relief; “from four to ten.”

“Well,” springing off the table in her excitement, “let us have a party too; a jolly little one at home here by ourselves.  Shall we?”

Betty slipped down from her perch on the clothes-press, Tony got off the fender, and all clustered round Kitty in a state of eager excitement to hear the rest of her plan.  They felt certain there was more.  Fanny could not conceal her interest either.

“And what will be best of all,” went on Kitty, “will be for you to ask us to tea in the kitchen, and we will ask Jabez too, and Grace, of course” —­Grace was Emily’s successor—­“and we will have a really lovely time, just as we used to have sometimes.  Shall we?  O Fanny, do say yes!”

“Seems to me,” said Fanny, “there isn’t no need.  ’Tis all settled, to my thinking.”  But there was a twinkle in her eye, and a flush of excitement on her cheek, and any one who knew Fanny could see that she was almost as pleased as the children.