quaint old engravings and colored prints?  All these were gone.  Instead of the threadbare Brussels carpet patterned with huge bouquets of flowers, there was a striped rag carpet.  There were a few rush-bottomed chairs, a box draped with red calico on which stood a water-bucket and a wash-pan, a cook-stove before the fireplace, and in the middle of the room a table covered with a red cloth, on which was set forth a supper of coffee, corn-cakes, fried bacon, and cold cabbage and potatoes.  A fat, freckle-faced girl, a little larger than Anne, and two boys of about twelve and fourteen were seated at the supper-table.  Beside the stove stood a stout, fair woman in a soiled gingham apron.  Their four pairs of wide-open, light-blue eyes stared at Anne.

“Where you pick up that child, Peter Collins?” demanded the woman, neglecting her frying cakes.

“She jes’ come to the door,” responded Mr. Collins.

“My sakes!” exclaimed his wife.  “Whose child is you?  Whar you come from, here after dark, this way?”

“Where’s Aunt Charity?” asked Anne.

“Aunt Charity?  Don’t no Aunt Charity live here.  This is Mr. Collins’s house,—­Peter Collins.  Is you lost?—­Peter, you Peter Collins!  I want know who on earth this child is you done brung here.  You always doing some outlandish thing!  Who is she?”

“How the thunder I know?” muttered her husband, pulling at his beard.

Anne stood bewildered.  This was home and yet it was not home.  Her lips quivered, she clasped Honey-Sweet tighter, and turned toward the door to go—­where?  Everything turned black around her, the floor seemed to give way under her feet, and in another moment she and Honey-Sweet were in a forlorn little heap on the floor and she was sobbing as if her heart would break.

“I want home!  I want somebody!” she wailed piteously.

Mrs. Collins sat down on the floor and drew the weeping child into her arms.

“Thar, thar, honey! don’t you cry! don’t you cry!” she said soothingly.  “Po’ little thing!  Le’ me take off your hat!  Why, yo’ little hands is jest as cold!  Lizzie, set the kettle on front of the stove.  Jake, you put some wood in the fire.  Now, honey, you set right in this rocking-chair by the stove and le’ me wrap a shawl round you.  I’ll have you some cambric tea and fry you some hot cakes in a jiffy.  A good supper’ll het you up.  I’d take shame to myself, Peter Collins, if I was you”—­she scowled at her husband as she bustled about—­“a gre’t big man like you skeerin’ a po’ little thing like that!  What diff’rence do it make who she is or whar she come from?  Anybody with two eyes in his head can see she’s jest a po’ little lost thing.  You gre’t gawk, you!”

“What is I done, I’d like to know?” inquired Mr. Collins, helplessly.

Anne had not realized that she was hungry until Mrs. Collins set before her a plateful of hot crisp cakes.  The good woman spread them with butter and opened a jar of ‘company’ sweetmeats,—­crisp watermelon rind, cut in leaf, star, and fish shapes.  While serving supper, Mrs. Collins chattered on in a soft, friendly voice.