"Hour and a half," came the nonchalant answer as Bob hurried on to the barn.
Betty sat down on the floor to put on her shoes and stockings. At first she was angry to think that she should be made to rush like this in order to have any breakfast when her uncle was paying her board and in any other household she would have been accorded some consideration as a guest. Then the humor of the situation appealed to her and she laughed till the tears came. She, Betty Gordon, who often had to be called three times in the morning, was scrambling into her clothes at top speed in the hope of securing something to eat.
"It's too funny!" she gasped as she pulled a middy blouse on over her head. "I'll bet the Peabody's never have to call any one twice to come to the table; not if they're within hearing distance. They come first call without coaxing."
The breakfast table was set in the kitchen, and when Betty entered Mrs. Peabody was putting small white saucers of oatmeal at each place. Ordinarily Betty did not care for oatmeal in warm weather, but this morning she was in no mood to quarrel with anything eatable and she dispatched her portion almost as quickly as Bob did his. Mr. Peabody grunted something which she took to mean good-morning, and the two hired men simply nodded to her. After the oatmeal came fried potatoes, bread without butter, ham and coffee. There was no milk to drink and no eggs.
"If I was going to stay," thought Betty to herself, "I'd get some stuff over in town and hide it in my room. I wonder if I couldn't anyway. When I leave, Bob would have it."
She fell to planning what she would buy and became as silent as any of the other five at that queer table.
CHAPTER IX
ONE ON BOB
As soon as the men finished eating they rose silently and shuffled out. Any diffidence Betty might have felt about facing any one at the table after her dramatic exit of the night before was speedily dispelled; no one paid the slightest attention to her. Mrs. Peabody had risen and begun to wash the dishes at the sink before Betty had finished.