"Well, it's real becoming to you," said Tess, kindly, eyeing the rather bony woman with reflective gaze. "And you're not as thin as Briggs, the baker. Mrs. MacCall says he doesn't cast a shadow."
"My soul! No!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "And his loaves of bread have got so't they don't cast much of a shadow. I've been complaining to him about his bread. The rise in the price of flour can't excuse altogether the stinginess of his loaves.
"He came here the other day about dark, and I had my porch door locked. I heard him knock and I asks, 'Who's there?'
"'It's the baker, ma'am,' says he. 'Here's your bread.'
"'Well, bring it in,' says I, forgetting the door was locked.
"'I don't see how I can, ma'am,' he says, ''nless I put it through the keyhole, ma'am,' and he begun to giggle. But I put the come-up-ance on him," declared Mrs. Adams, with satisfaction. I says:
"'I don't see what's to stop you, Myron Briggs. The goodness knows your loaves are small enough to go through the keyhole.' And he didn't have nothin' more to say to me."
"Why, I think that's very funny," said Tess, in her sober way. "I'll tell that to Mrs. Eland. Maybe it will amuse her."
But on the next occasion when the two younger Corner House girls went to the hospital, Tess did not try to cheer the matron's spirits by repeating Mrs. Adams's joke on the baker.
Mrs. Eland had been crying. Even usually unobservant Dot noticed it. Her eyes were red and her face pale and drawn. The pretty pink of her cheeks and the ready twinkle in her gray eyes, were missing.