Lois laid her head down on the sofa arm.

“That’s right,” said Amanda.  “You can jest lay there a little while.  I’m goin’ out to tell your mother to make you a cup of tea.  That’ll set you right up.”

Amanda found Mrs. Field already making the tea.  She measured it out carefully, and never looked around.  Amanda stepped close to her.

“Mis’ Field,” she whispered, “I hope you wa’n’t hurt by what I said.  I meant it for the best.”

“I sha’n’t give way so again,” said Mrs. Field.  Her face had a curious determined expression.

“I hope you don’t feel hurt?”

“No, I don’t.  I sha’n’t give way so again.”  She poured the boiling water into the teapot, and set it on the stove.

Amanda looked at a covered dish on the stove hearth.  “What was you goin’ to have for dinner?” said she.

“Lamb broth.  I’m goin’ to heat up some for her.  She didn’t eat hardly a mouthful of breakfast.”

“That’s jest the thing for her.  I’ll get out the kettle and put it on to heat.  I dun’no’ of anything that gits cold any quicker than lamb broth, unless it’s love.”

Amanda put on a cheerful air as she helped Mrs. Field.  Presently the two women carried in the little repast to Lois.

“She’s asleep,” whispered Amanda, who went first with the tea.

They stood looking at the young girl, stretched out her slender length, her white delicate profile showing against the black arm of the sofa.

Her mother caught her breath.  “She’s got to be waked up; she’s got to have some nourishment, anyhow,” said she.  “Come, Lois, wake up, and have your dinner.”

Lois opened her eyes.  All the animation and defiance were gone from her face.  She was so exhausted that she made no resistance to anything.  She let them raise her, prop her up with a pillow, and nearly feed her with the dinner.  Then she lay back, and her eyes closed.

Amanda went home, and Mrs. Field went back to the kitchen to put away the dinner dishes.  She had eaten nothing herself, and now she poured some of the broth into a cup, and drank it down with great gulps without tasting it.  It was simply filling of a necessity the lamp of life with oil.

After her housework was done, she sat down in the kitchen with her knitting.  There was no sound from the other room.

The latter part of the afternoon Amanda came past the window and entered the back door.  She carried a glass of foaming beer.  Amanda was famous through the neighborhood for this beer, which she concocted from roots and herbs after an ancient recipe.  It was pleasantly flavored with aromatic roots, and instinct with agreeable bitterness, being an innocently tonic old-maiden brew.

“I thought mebbe she’d like a glass of my beer,” whispered Amanda.  “I came round the house so’s not to disturb her.  How is she?”

“I guess she’s asleep.  I ain’t heard a sound.”