Dixie stood in the open door, watching the three children as they climbed the trail, and when they reached the top, before they turned into the cañon road, they waved back to her, and the little mother of them all smiled and nodded. Then she went into the kitchen with a sigh that she tried to change into a song. She noticed that the big chair had been turned, and that Sylvia was no longer curled up in it, but sat, leaning back, her thin legs hanging listlessly, for they were not quite long enough to reach the floor.
Sylvia looked so wan and miserable that Dixie silently asked herself the question that she and Carol had planned for the game: “What would I say and do if I really liked Sylvia?”
For a few moments she said nothing as she went about her morning tasks. Her thoughts were busy searching for an answer to her query, but it was hard to decide what would be best to do, since her former advance had been so rudely met.
Dixie went into the small lean-to room to make Ken’s bed and Jimmy-Boy’s crib. When she returned she found the blue eyes of the little guest watching her.
“I’m hungry,” Sylvia said, in a tone of voice which implied that she was being much abused. “I want cake and cocoa.”
“I am sorry, but we children always have porridge for breakfast, and we drink cold milk,” Dixie said. Then, fearing that she had not been as gracious as a hostess, even an unwilling hostess, should be, she added: “You can have all the sugar you want on the porridge, and the cream is so good.”
“Well, you may bring me some, but I won’t promise to eat it,” said the small girl condescendingly as she curled one thin leg under her and leaned back as though she intended to remain indefinitely in that comfortable chair.
The lines of Dixie’s sweet mouth became firmer. “Dearie,” she said in a tone which convinced the listener that she was in earnest, “if you wish breakfast, you must come to the table.” Then more gently she added: “If you were sick and couldn’t walk, I’d fetch it to you on a tray. But you can walk as well as I can, Sylvia.”
The pale-blue eyes opened in unfeigned astonishment. “Why, I have always had my breakfast brought to me on a tray,” she said. “Fanchon brings it.”
“Of course you do, dearie, at home, where you have a maid to wait on you, but here we all wait on ourselves. There now, I’ve put your porridge in one of our prettiest kept-for-company dishes, and here’s a pitcher of cream and the sugar. You may eat it when you are ready to come to the table. Now I’m going up to the loft to make our bed.”