Charlotte met the first of the glances with a covertly chiding look and an imperceptible shake of her head; then she refused to meet them, keeping her eyes away from her exultant brother.  She herself was actually hungry, poor child, for the truth was that for the last few days it had been somewhat short commons at the Carrolls’, and Charlotte was one of the sort who, under such circumstances, are seized with a sudden loss of appetite.  She had really eaten very little for some hours, and now, in spite of a curious embarrassment and agitation, which under ordinary circumstances would have lessened her desire for food, she herself ate eagerly.  The meal was both dainty and abundant.  Mrs. Anderson had always prided herself upon the meals she set before guests.  There was always in the house a store of sweets to be drawn from on such occasions, and while Anderson had been binding up Eddy’s wound, the maid had been sent to the market for a chicken to supplement the beefsteak which had been intended for the family supper.  So there was fried chicken and celery salad, and the most wonderful cream biscuits, and fruit and pound cake, and quince preserves—­quarters of delectable, long-drawn-out flavor in a rosy jelly—­and tea and thick cream and loaf-sugar in the old, solid service with its squat pieces finished with beading.  Eddy gloated over it all openly.  He fairly forgot his manners, for, after all, he was, although in a desultory sort of way, a well-bred boy.  The Carrolls, as far as their manners went, were gentlefolk, and came of a long line of gentlefolk.  But it happened that the china which had come to them from their forebears had for the most part been broken in the course of their wanderings from place to place, and in its place was an ornate and rather costly, and unpaid-for, set.  Eddy now quite openly lifted the saucer of thin, pink-and-gold china, in which his teacup rested, and held it to the light.

“Whew, ain’t it thin?” he ejaculated.

“Why, Eddy!” Charlotte cried, flushing with dismay.

“I don’t care.  It is awful thin,” persisted the boy.  He held the saucer before his eyes.  “I can see you through it; yes, I can,” said he.

But Mrs. Anderson, although her old-fashioned ideas of the decorous behavior due from children at table were somewhat offended, and she later told her son that it did seem to her that the boy must have been somewhat neglected, was yet very susceptible to flattery of those teacups, which had descended to her from her own mother, and which she had always regarded as superior to any of the Anderson family china, of which there was quite a store.  So she merely smiled and remarked gently that the china was very old, and she believed quite rare, and it was, indeed, unusually thin, yet not a piece of the original set had been broken.

“Why didn’t we have china like this instead of that we have?” demanded Eddy of Charlotte.

“Hush, dear,” said Charlotte.  “This china is so very old and valuable, you know, that not every one could—­that we could not—­ I believe we had some very pretty china in our family, but it all got broken,” she added.