Dulcie chuckled and nodded her turbaned head.
“Dat’s so! Dat’s w’ot I plan ter do dis minit. I’se jes’ on de way!” and with another nod she ambled down the path toward her own cabin, and Roxy entered the kitchen.
CHAPTER II
POLLY’S RETURN
There was not a sound in the quiet kitchen as Roxy entered. For a moment the little girl stood still, listening intently, but the house itself seemed to be taking a nap in the mid-afternoon quiet of the June day.
“Mother and Grandma will be in their rooms now,” thought Roxy; “they won’t expect me home before the last of the afternoon. I’ll have plenty of time,” and she tiptoed across the well-scrubbed floor toward the pantry. Before she tried the door she again looked about the room cautiously, remembering her promise to the half-starved man who had trusted her, and fearful that someone might enter the kitchen before she could secure food and escape. Roxy knew that if her mother heard her Mrs. Delfield would at once want to know why she had not gone to Sharpsburg with Polly Lawrence, and even in the excitement of seeing the Confederate soldiers, and of discovering the runaway, Roxy had resolved not to mention her disagreement with Polly. Already she felt a little ashamed, since the soldier had said her father would be proud to be called a Yankee, that she had been so ready to be angry at Polly.
But as she carefully opened the pantry door Roxy was thinking only of the poor fellow hidden behind the dogwood, and of what she could take him.
There on the lower shelf of the pantry, covered with a white cloth, stood a platter heaped with small round cakes that Dulcie had baked that morning. Roxy carefully lifted the cloth and gazed at them admiringly. “And there’s citron and currants in every one,” she whispered to herself, and carefully chose three of the cakes, and replaced the cloth.
“I’ll have to have something to carry things in,” she thought anxiously, and her glance fell on Dulcie’s egg basket, where only three or four eggs remained.
“I’ll take that, and the eggs too,” she decided, and in a moment the three cakes rested beside the eggs, and Roxy’s eyes searched the pantry shelves for something more.
The meat left from the midday meal would, she knew, be in the cool cellar closet, and Roxy feared she could not reach the shelf on which it was kept; but the bread jar was close at hand, and removing the cover Roxy drew out an entire loaf of freshly baked bread.