“Poor old soul!  Perhaps she had daughters of her own,” said Alice in a low voice.

It was impossible for the old woman to have heard, but it seemed almost as though she had, for just at that moment she sighed deeply, and drawing from her bag a neatly folded handkerchief wiped her eyes.  Then she settled her spectacles on her nose and looked up at Ruth with a brave smile.  The girls were touched by her courage, and each resolved privately to buy some of her pins and needles before she left the house.

At last everything was ready and the girls looked at the table with pardonable pride.  “My, but I’m hungry,” sighed Ruth, “and everything looks so good.”

“I don’t see why my popovers aren’t poppier,” said Betty anxiously.  “I thought I followed—­Oh, goose!  Idiot!  What do you think I did?” she wailed.  “I wanted to be sure to have enough, so I doubled the recipe—­but I forgot to double the eggs!”

Betty’s despair was so comical that the girls couldn’t help laughing, in spite of the fact that the popovers had not fulfilled the end and aim of their existence.

“Oh, Betty, to leave out the poppiest part of them,” laughed Charlotte; “now just look at my apples; not a thing left out in cooking those.”

The girls shouted again, and the old woman looked around the table as though wondering what the fun was about.

The supper progressed merrily, and everything, even the unambitious popovers, tasted good to the hungry cooke.  Their guest paid the highest possible compliment to her hostesses by devouring with great eagerness everything that was offered to her.  After she had been served three times to scalloped oysters, and had eaten five popovers and two baked apples, the girls looked at each other in amazement.

“The poor old thing probably hasn’t had a square meal in years,” said Charlotte softly.

“She’ll never be able to walk if she eats ail that cake and pudding she has on her plate,” said Dorothy anxiously, “and that’s her second cup of chocolate.  Why, she’s got an appetite like—­like a boy.”

There was a subdued chuckle from the other end of the table followed by a laugh which ail the girls recognized.  Then the old woman, very red in the face and very much hampered by her skirts, pushed back her chair and started for the door.

Quick as a flash Dorothy, looking very determined, stood with her back against the door.  “Guard the other door, girls, and some one help me here!” she cried.  “Now, Joe Bancroft, who helped you get up this trick?”

Joe, to whom laughter and eating were the main objects of life, threw back his head and laughed until he choked, and grew so red in the face that the girls were actually frightened.

“Oh, oh,” he gasped at last, “that’s done me lots of good.  I think I could eat a little more supper now.”

He looked so funny standing there in the neat, black skirt topped by the respectable bonnet and shawl, the spectacles and white hair, that the girls went off into shrieks of merriment.  Even Dorothy, who was really angry, couldn’t wholly resist the fun of the situation, but she was sober again in a moment and said sternly, “You haven’t told us yet who are the others.  You never got this up all by yourself, I know.”