"Coffee and buttered toast, Elsie," said her mother.
"Yes, I am so tired of tea. You see we have to make it over and over again with the same tea leaves, that there is no taste in it."
Poor Elsie had eaten very little for the last week. She had refused everything they had offered her, and now this cry for coffee and brown buttered toast wrung her mother's heart.
"You shall have it, dear; you shall have it," she said. "I will get some for you very soon."
And she went downstairs and wrote a few lines to her sister, telling her that her husband was dead, and her children almost starving; and then Tom was sent with it to the post. She never dreamed but that she would receive a reply and some money in the course of a day or two, unless her sister came to her, which she might do.
But the next day passed, and the next, and there was no postman called at the cottage. In vain Mrs. Winn watched and waited by the window for him, and then at the gate. The postman went past without stopping; and when she asked if he had no letter for her, he said with a shake of the head, as though she was a child, "None to-day."
The doctor went from Mrs. Winn's to the schoolmaster's cottage to see Mary, and hear all about Tom's scholarship, for he had only heard the bare fact from Tom himself as he stopped the gig.
"I am very glad to hear it, very glad," said the doctor; "for now the lad will be no expense to his mother, and be in the way of learning a good business."
"Yes, and just the very one he likes best of all," said Mary. "It is a better scholarship than Elsie's, and Tom won't have to give it up as Elsie did."
"No, indeed, I hope not," said the doctor. "Now let us hear a little about yourself, Miss Mary," he added.