Harcourt began to prepare his own breakfast. He heard his neighbor in the next room preparing hers.
“I will speak to Annie before I go to work,” he said to himself, as he went about his task.
When his breakfast of coffee, bread, butter and chops was on the table, he turned to the child, and said:
“Now, then, would you like to sit up to the table and have some breakfast with me?”
“Oh, yes; please! What you did give me was awful good, but it only stayed my stomach. I don’t think I ever got so hungry again so soon after eating in all my born days.”
“Come, then,” he said, as he lifted her up, folded the tattered wrap more closely around her, sat her in a chair and pushed the chair to the table.
He helped the child first.
“She must have been half famished,” he said to himself, as he noticed the avidity with which she consumed the food placed before her; for he did not know that she had but recently recovered from a long and severe illness and had the appetite of a healthy convalescent.
“Well, I must leave her in the care of Annie to-day. Our Annie will be able to get more information out of her in one hour than I could in a year,” he reflected.
Before he had finished his meal he heard the thumper-thumper-thumper-thumper of his neighbor’s indefatigable sewing machine in full blast.