“Why, it aint an hour sence breakfast!  But you can do as you like; only, if Mandy eats hers, baby’ll want it, sure.  Better wait till he’s asleep.”

“All right; Mandy can wait,” said Bub, cheerfully, as his mother set the plate of cake on the table before leaving the house.

“Oh, Bub, I’m awful hungry, too!” said Mandy.  “You cut the cake in halves,—­mind you cut fair,—­and hold my piece for me where baby can’t see it.  Sit right here behind me.”

So Mandy on the door-step, and Bub on the floor, with his back against the door, which he gently tilted as he munched his cake, were very silent and comfortable for a minute or two.

The hens crawed and cackled, with cozy, gossipy noises, in the sun before the door; the baby blinked and cooed contentedly.

“Ready for another bite?” said Bub, holding out Mandy’s cake close to her left ear.

“In a min-ute,” said Mandy, with her mouth full.  “Bub Lewis, aint you ashamed of yourself?  You’ve been eatin’ off my piece!  I saw you just now!”

“Aint, either!  You can see great things with the back of your head!  Here’s your piece ‘n’ here’s mine.  Yours is ever so much bigger!”

“Well, you’ve been gobbling yours’s fast’s you could, and I only had two little bites off mine.”

“Little bites!  I sh’d think so!  Don’t know what you call big ones, then!  So chuck full you couldn’t speak half a minute ago.  Here, hold your own cake, and let baby grab it!”

“Well, I’d rather give it all to him, than have you eat it up on the sly!”

Bub walked down toward the water without deigning a reply, but thought of several things on his way which would have been more withering than silence.

Mandy did not enjoy the rest of her cake very much,—­eating it furtively, so baby should not want it, and dropping crumbs on his little white head, which he kept twisting around, to see what she was doing.  She began to think that perhaps she had been rather hasty in accusing Bub; but surely that was the right-hand piece, instead of the left, he was biting from?  Well, anyway, it didn’t much matter now the cake was all eaten.  The old rooster had wandered round the corner of the house, where he was presently heard calling to his favorite hen.  She ran, and all the others followed.  Baby grew restless, and made little impatient noises, and the sun was getting very hot and bright on the door-step.  What was Bub doing down there among the nets on the drying-ground?  He had been very still, with his head bent down and his hands moving about for ever so long.

Mandy felt that, after their late unpleasantness, it would be more dignified to take no notice of Bub for a while; but curiosity, and baby’s restlessness, finally prevailed over pride, and rolling up her troublesome little burden in an old red shawl, she trotted with him down to the river.

“Bub,” she said, after standing by him some time in silence, watching him driving a row of small sticks into the ground, “was it my piece you was bitin’ off?”