Both children exclaimed admiringly over the quaint shape of the bowl and pitchers, as Miss Fletcher deposited the tray on her sewing-table.

“When I was a child we didn’t smash up handsome toys the way children do nowadays.  They weren’t so easy to get.”

“And didn’t your niece ever have a little girl?” asked Flossie, beginning to think that in such a case perhaps these dear dishes might come to be her own.

“Yes, she did,” replied Miss Fletcher kindly, and as she looked at the guest’s interested little face her eyes were thoughtful.  “I shall give them to her some day.”

“Has she ever seen them?” asked Hazel.

“Once.  I thought you children must be hungry after your games, and you’d like a little lunch.”

This idea was so pleasing to Hazel that Flossie caught her enthusiasm.

“You’ll be the mistress and pour, Flossie, and I’ll be the waitress,” she said.  “Won’t it be the most fun!  I suppose, ma’am, you’ll like to have the children come to the table?” she added, with sudden respectfulness of tone.

“Yes,” returned Flossie, with elegant languor.  “I think it teaches them good manners.”

And then the waitress forgot herself so far as to hop up and down; for Miss Fletcher, who had returned to the house, now reappeared bearing a tray of eatables and drinkables.

What a good time the children had, with the sewing-table for a sideboard, and the lap-table fixed firmly across Flossie’s chair.

“Are you sure you aren’t getting too tired, dear?” asked Miss Fletcher of her invalid, doubtfully.  “Wouldn’t you rather the waitress poured?”

But Flossie declared she was feeling well, and Hazel looked up eagerly into Miss Fletcher’s eyes and said, “You know she can’t get too tired unless we’re doing wrong.”

“Oh, indeed!” returned the hostess dryly.  “Then there’s nothing to fear, for she’s doing the rightest kind of right.”

When the table was set forth, two small plates heaped high with bread-and-butter sandwiches, a coffee-pot and milk-pitcher of beaten egg and milk, a tea-pot of grape juice, one dish of nuts and another of jelly, the waitress’s eyes spoke so eloquently that Flossie mercifully dismissed her on the spot, and invited a lady of her acquaintance to the feast, who immediately drew up a chair with eager alacrity.

Miss Fletcher seated herself again and looked on with the utmost satisfaction, while the children laughed and ate, and when the sandwich plates and coffee-pot and tea-pot and milk-pitcher were all emptied, she replenished them from the well-furnished sideboard.

“My, I wish I was aunt Hazel’s real little niece!” exclaimed Flossie, enchanted with pouring from the delightful china.

“So do I wish I was,” said Hazel, looking around at her hostess with a smile that was returned.

When Hazel sat down to supper at home that evening, she had plenty to tell of the delightful afternoon, which made Mr. Badger and Hannah open their eyes to the widest, although she did not suspect how she was astonishing them.