Annie Laurie shook her finger at her aunt.
“Don’t you call me Ann,” she laughed. “The best dishes are none too good for you two; and anyway, we’re celebrating because we’re home!”
Aunt Zillah narrowed her eyes in a way she had.
“You’re sure you love your home, child, now that there are only us two old souls in it, and that we’re so poor and all?”
“Of course I love my home,” declared Annie Laurie. “I should say I did! And we’re not going to be poor. I simply won’t be poor. And I don’t feel poor anyway. It’s so meachin to feel poor! Please don’t use the word, Aunt. How can you, when we have a fire like this and suppers as good as those on the trays, and when we can ask a friend in whenever we please, and go on lovely vacations? Poor!”
She gave a little shiver of disgust at the word.
“Well, I’m sure you do put heart into one,” sighed Aunt Zillah, as if she needed all the good cheer that anybody could spare her. “Sometimes I do think we’re falling off in our spirits, Adnah and I.”
The girls stood laughing and talking with the aunts a few minutes more, and then ran down to get their own suppers.
“Let’s eat it before the living room fire,” said Azalea. “We’ll put it on the sewing table.”
“And we’ll have Sam to eat with us. He simply must, that’s all, we’ve so much to tell him,” added Annie Laurie.