Charlotte adored her Aunt Anna, and seldom took any exception to anything which she said or did, but then she turned upon her.

“Poor papa is hurt by what Aunt Anna said,” she declared, severely, “and I don’t wonder.  Here he cannot afford to buy as much to eat as he would like, and hasn’t enough to pay the butcher, and Aunt Anna says things like that.  I don’t wonder he is hurt.  It is cruel.”  Tears flashed into Charlotte’s eyes.  She looked accusingly at her aunt, who laughed.

“I think as much of your father as you do,” said she, “and I know him better.  Don’t fret, honey.”

“Your aunt is ill, dear,” said Mrs. Carroll, who always veered to the side of the attacked party, and who, moreover, seldom grasped sarcasm, “and besides, sweetheart,” she added, “I don’t see what she said that could have hurt Arthur’s feelings.”  Just then Carroll passed the window towards the stable.  “There,” she cried, triumphantly, “he is just going around to order the carriage.  He had finished his luncheon.  He never did care much for that kind of pudding.  You are making too much of it, Charlotte, dear.”

“No, I am not,” said Charlotte, firmly.  “Papa did not like the way Anna spoke; he was hurt.  It was cruel.”  She got up and left the table also, and a soft sob was heard as she closed the dining-room door behind her.

“That dear child is so sensitive and nervous, and she thinks so much of Arthur,” Mrs. Carroll said.  “Give me the pudding sauce, Marie.”

Eddy, who had been busily eating his pudding, looked up from his empty plate.  “Aunt Anna did mean it was fortunate she had lost her appetite, because there wasn’t enough to eat,” he declared, in his sweet treble.  “You ain’t very sharp, Amy.  She did mean that, and that was the reason papa went out.  But it was true, too.  There isn’t enough to eat.  I haven’t had near enough pudding, and it is all gone.  The dish is scraped.  There is none left for Marie and Martin, either.”

“I want no pudding,” said Marie, unexpectedly, from behind Mrs. Carroll’s chair.  She spoke with a certain sullenness, and her eyes were red.  She had a large, worn place in the sleeve of her white shirt-waist, and she was given to lifting her arm and surveying it with an air of covert injury and indignation.

“The omelet is all gone, too,” said Eddy.  “Marie and Martin haven’t got anything to eat.”

“Oh, hush, dear!” said Mrs. Carroll.  “Marie can cook another omelet.”  The Hungarian girl opened her mouth as if to speak, then she shut it again.  An indescribable expression was on her pretty, peasant face, the face of a down-trodden race, who yet retained in spirit a spark of rebellion and resentment.  Marie, in her ragged blouse, with her countenance of inscrutable silence, standing behind her mistress’s chair, surveying the denuded table, was the embodiment of a folk-lore song.  She had been in America only a year and a half, and the Lord only knew what she had expected in that land