“I will take the broth to Patsey if you show me which room, then you can look after baby until I come back again.”
The small lame girl, who was warming broth in a saucepan at the stove, faced round in amazement, while a girl lying on the settle by the window, covered up in a rug, lifted her head from the cushion with a start of surprise, and even the baby in the cradle in the corner left off wailing, attracted by the nodding pink roses in the new-comer’s old-fashioned bonnet.
But Nell had no idea of the attention she had attracted. Elbowing the lame girl gently aside, she got possession of the saucepan, and having decided that the broth was warm enough, poured it into the basin which stood on the table, then said brightly—
“Now show me where Patsey is, or can I find him myself?”
“He is in there,” answered Flossie, pointing a small, rather grimy finger in the direction of an open door at the end of the room; then she added with a gasp, “But he doesn’t like strangers.”
“Oh, he will like me,” replied Nell, in a confident tone, making the pink roses nod up and down as she nodded her head; then, carrying the broth, she walked across the kitchen and into the room where Patsey, a freckled-faced boy of twelve years old, was lying in bed.
“Who are you?” he asked in great surprise, attracted as the baby had been by the pink roses which adorned the stranger’s bonnet.
“Oh, just now I’m the broth-woman, and you’ve got to sit up in bed and drink it every drop. Then I may change into the bed-making woman—that is, if any one wants to have a bed made, and after that—well, you just see about drinking this broth, while I think about what I will be next,” she said coaxingly, reading signs of rebellion in Patsey’s eye.
“I don’t like broth,” he whined.
“Call it soup, then, and you know every one likes soup,” she said, with a low merry laugh.