“You can eat a slice of bacon and an egg, can’t you, dearie?” asked her granny.

“Yes, please!” with a sigh of pleasure.  “May I?”

“Why, of course,” said granny heartily.  “Why not?  Do you like eggs?”

Jessie nodded.  “I had one once, a whole one, but that was for my dinner.  We don’t ever have eggs for breakfast at home,” she added impressively.

“Don’t you?” answered her grandfather gravely, “then what do you have?  Something you like better, I s’pose?”

He did not ask from curiosity, that was the last thing he would have been guilty of; he only wanted to show an interest and to hear her talk.

“We don’t have nuffin’, ’cepts when father has got work, then father has a bloater.  Me and mother have one too, sometimes, then.  But when father is out of work we only has bread.”

Patience turned pale, and Thomas groaned.  Jessie looked up with quick sympathy.  “Have you hurted your toof, granp?” she asked gravely, little dreaming that it was she herself who had given him pain.

“No, my dear, granp’s all right.  Try and make a good breakfast now.  You’ve got to get as plump and round as the kitten over there.”

Patience had laid down her knife and fork, and sat staring before her with miserably troubled eyes.  “It seems wrong to be eating, when—­ when there’s others—­one’s own, too—­going hungry!”

“Nonsense now,” said Thomas gruffly; “don’t ’ee talk like that, mother, it’s foolish.  We’ve got to think of ourselves and those about us, and it’s our duty to eat and drink and be sensible, whether we likes it or not.”  He spoke gruffly, because he felt that if he spoke in any other way, he or Patience would break down.

Jessie came to their help, though.  “My rose is nearly out, granp,” she announced proudly, as soon as she was able to lift her thoughts from the wonderful experience of having an egg and bacon for breakfast.  “I saw it all showing pink.  I expect by the time we’ve finished our breakfases it will be right wide out.  You come up and see too, will you?”

And sure enough when breakfast was really done, she took his hand in hers and led him up and into the room he had shunned so long.

“I don’t think it will be full out until to-morrow,” he decided; but Jessie couldn’t help thinking he had made a mistake, and many times that day she climbed the stairs to see, and was quite troubled when at last she had to go to bed, for fear the bud would open while her eyes were shut.

“I think it is a very slow rose,” she said, shaking her head sagely as her granny was undressing her.  “I am sure it ought to have been out by this time.”

And then, after all her watching, the bud burst into full bloom before Jessie was awake the next morning.  When she opened her eyes and saw it she felt quite vexed.  “I wish I had put you back in a dark corner,” she said to it, “then you wouldn’t have opened till I was awake.”