“It didn’t begin to be so pretty as this,” said Eddy.  “I remember it.  The cups were like bowls, and there were black wreaths around them.  There weren’t any handles, either.  I don’t see why we couldn’t have got some china as pretty as this.  Suppose it was valuable.  Why, I don’t believe that we have now is paid for.  What difference would it make?”

Charlotte blushed so that Mrs. Anderson felt an impulse to draw the poor, little, troubled head upon her shoulder and tell her not to mind.

“Let me give you some more of the quince preserve, dear,” she said, in the softest voice; and Charlotte, who did not want it, passed her little glass dish to take advantage of the opportunity afforded her to cover her confusion.

“What difference would it make, say, Charlotte?” persisted Eddy.

“Hush, dear,” said Charlotte, painfully.

“Here, son, pass your plate for this chicken,” said Anderson; and Eddy, with a shrewd glance of half-comprehension from one to the other, passed his plate and subsided, after a muttered remark that he didn’t see why Charlotte minded.

“Wasn’t that a bully supper?” he whispered, pressing close to his sister when they entered the sitting-room after the meal was finished.

“Hush, dear,” she whispered back.

“Ain’t you glad you stayed?  You wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been for me.”

Charlotte turned and looked at him sharply.  Mrs. Anderson had lingered in the dining-room to give some directions to the maid, and Anderson had stepped out on the porch for a second’s puff at a cigar.

“Eddy Carroll,” said she, in a whisper, “you didn’t?”

Eddy faced her defiantly.  “Didn’t what?”

“You didn’t tell a lie about that?”

Eddy lowered his eyes, frowned, and scraped one foot in a way he had when embarrassed.  “Amy did say something about it was such a pleasant day and Addison,” he replied, doggedly.

“But did she say they were really going there, and would not be back?”

“Anna said if they went there they could not get back.”

“But did she say they were going?  Tell me the truth, Eddy Carroll.”

Eddy scraped.

“I see they did not,” said Charlotte, severely.

“Eddy, I don’t know what papa will say.”

“I know,” said Eddy, simply, with a curious mixture of ruefulness and defiance.  Then he added:  “If you want to be mean enough to tell on a feller, after he’s been the means of your having such a supper as that (and you were hungry, too; you needn’t say you wasn’t; you ate an awful lot yourself), you can.”

“I am not going to tell unless I am asked, when I certainly shall not tell a lie,” replied Charlotte; “but papa will find it out himself, I am afraid, Eddy.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if he did,” admitted Eddy.

“And then, you know—­”

“Yes, I know; but I don’t care.  I have had that bully supper, anyhow.  He can’t alter that.  And, say, Charlotte.”