She sat down wearily on an ugly little old trunk near the door.  Aunt Hetty shut up a drawer in a dresser, turned to Elly, and said, “Mercy, child, what’s the matter?  Has the teacher been scolding you?”

“No, Aunt Hetty,” said Elly faintly, looking out of the window.

“Anybody sick at your house?” asked Aunt Hetty, coming towards the little girl.

“No,” said Elly, shaking her head.

“Don’t you feel well?” asked Aunt Hetty, laying one wrinkled, shaky old hand on her shoulder.

“No, Aunt Hetty,” said Elly, her eyes large and sad.

“Maybe she’s hungry,” suggested Agnes, in a muffled voice from the depths of a closet.

“Are you?” asked Aunt Hetty.

“Yes,” cried Elly.

Aunt Hetty laughed.  “Well, I don’t know if there are any cookies in the house or not,” she said, “we’ve been so busy house-cleaning.  Agnes, did you bake any cookies this morning?”

Elly was struck into stupor at this.  Think of not knowing if there were any cookies in the house!

Agnes appeared, tiny and old and stooped and wrinkled, like her mistress.  She had a big, rolled-up woolen-covered comforter in her arms, over which she nodded.  “Yes, I made some.  You told me to make some every Wednesday,” she said.  She went on, looking anxiously at Aunt Hetty, “There ain’t any moth-holes in this.  Was this the comfortable you meant?  I thought this was the one you told me to leave out of the camphor chest.  I thought you told me . . .”

“You know where to find the cookies, don’t you, Elly?” asked Aunt Hetty, over her shoulder, trotting rapidly like a little dry, wind-blown leaf, towards Agnes and the comforter.

“Oh yes, Aunt Hetty!” shouted Elly, halfway down the stairs.

Aunt Hetty called after her, “Take all you want . . . three or four.  They won’t hurt you.  There’s no egg in our recipe.”

Elly was there again, in the empty pantry, before the cookie-jar.  She lifted the cracked plate again. . . .  But, oh! how differently she did feel now! . . . and she had a shock of pure, almost solemn, happiness at the sight of the cookies.  She had not only been good and done as Mother would want her to, but she was going to have four of those cookies.  Three or four, Aunt Hetty had said!  As if anybody would take three if he was let to have four!  Which ones had the most raisins?  She knew of course it wasn’t so very nice to pick and choose that way, but she knew Mother would let her, only just laugh a little and say it was a pity to be eight years old if you couldn’t be a little greedy!

Oh, how happy she was!  How light she felt!  How she floated back up the stairs!  What a perfectly sweet old thing Aunt Hetty was!  And what a nice old house she had, though not so nice as home, of course.  What pretty mahogany balusters, and nice white stairs!  Too bad she had brought in that mud.  But they were house-cleaning anyhow.  A little bit more to clean up, that was all.  And what luck that they were in the east-room garret, the one that had all the old things in it, the hoop-skirts and the shells and the old scoop-bonnets, and the four-poster bed and those fascinating old cretonne bags full of treasures.