"I don't believe you ever did have enough to eat," giggled Agnes.
"I don't know that I ever did," admitted Neale.
"Suppose you should wake up in the night?" she suggested. "If you were real hungry it would be dreadful. I think you'd better take some crackers and cheese upstairs with, you when you go to bed."
Neale took this all in good temper, but Mrs. MacCall exclaimed, suddenly:
"There! I knew there was something I forgot from the store to-day. Tess, do you and Dot want to run over to Mr. Stetson's after supper and bring me some crackers?"
"Of course we will, Mrs. MacCall," replied Tess.
"And I'll take my Alice-doll. She needs an airing," declared Dot. "Her health isn't all that we might wish since that Lillie Treble buried her alive."
"Buried her alive?" cried Neale. "Playing savages?"
"No," said Tess, gravely. "And she buried dried apples with her, too. It was an awful thing, and we don't talk about it—much," she added, in a whisper, with a nod toward Dot's serious face.
Out of this trip to the grocery arose a misunderstanding that was very funny in the end. Ruth had chosen the very room, at the back of the house, in which the lady from Ipsilanti and her little daughter had slept, for the use of Neale O'Neil. After supper she had gone up there to make the bed afresh, and she was there when Tess and Dorothy returned home from the store, filled to the lips, and bursting, with a wonderful piece of news.