"Why, Lord a-mercy, child, your chin don't come up to the table."
On the chair she placed a wooden box, perching the doll on top and taking a seat herself just opposite. She emptied the blackberries into a mutilated plate, brought from the cupboard a handful of toasted acorns, on which she poured boiling water, then set the concoction aside to steep.
"Now, Miss Susan Jemima," said Virgie, addressing her vis-à-vis with the hospitable courtesy due to so great a lady, "we are goin' to have some breakfas'." She paused, in a shade of doubt, then smiled a faint apology: "It isn't very much of a breakfas', darlin', but we'll make believe it's waffles an' chicken an'—an' hot rolls an' batter-bread an'—an' everything." She rose to her little bare feet, holding her wisp of a skirt aside, and made a sweeping bow. "Allow me, Miss Jemima, to make you a mos' delicious cup of coffee."
And, while the little hostess prepared the meal, a man looked out from the partly open door behind her, with big dark eyes, which were like her own, yet blurred by a mist of pity and of love.
"Susan," said the hostess presently, "it's ready now, and we'll say grace; so don't you talk an' annoy your mother."
The tiny brown head was bowed. The tiny brown hands, with their berry-stained fingers, were placed on the table's edge; but Miss Susan Jemima sat bolt upright, though listening, it seemed, to the words of reverence falling from a mother-baby's lips:
"Lord, make us thankful for the blackberries an' the aco'n coffee an'—an' all our blessin's; but please, sir, sen' us somethin' that tastes jus' a little better—if you don't mind. Amen!"
And the man, who leaned against the door and watched, had also bowed his head. A pain was in his throat—and in his heart—a pain that gripped him, till two great tears rolled down his war-worn cheek and were lost in his straggling beard.
"Virgie!" he whispered hoarsely. "Virgie!"
She started at the sound and looked about her, wondering; then, as the name was called again, she slid from her chair and ran forward with a joyous cry: