A STRUGGLE IN THE NIGHT.
During the remainder of this day it appeared to Joe and Plums as if they were abandoned by the little woman who had hitherto treated them with so much attention.
Immediately after Joe arrived with his charge, aunt Dorcas and the princess disappeared inside the house, and neither of them seemed to desire the companionship of the boys until, at an unusually late hour, they were summoned to dinner.
To Plums's great disappointment, the noonday meal was a lunch, rather than a dinner, and aunt Dorcas apologised, by saying:
"I was so interested in making the acquaintance of your princess, Joseph, that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I forgot my household duties, and it was half past eleven before I remembered we hadn't had dinner."
"'Cordin' to the slat of stuff you've got here on the table, I should think you'd been at work all the forenoon," Joe said, approvingly, but there was the faintest suspicion of jealousy in his heart because the princess no longer demanded his attention.
Aunt Dorcas had arrayed her in some plain garments which might once have belonged to herself or her sisters, and the little maid was so well content with this new friend that she had but curt greetings for the boy who considered himself her guardian.
Perhaps aunt Dorcas understood from the expression on Joe's face something of that which was in his mind, when the princess chattered and cooed to the little woman, paying no attention to the others at the table, for she said, in a kindly tone:
"It's to be expected, Joseph, that a baby like this one would take more readily to a woman than a boy."
"Oh, I know that, aunt Dorcas," Joe replied, with a poor assumption of carelessness, "an' I'm awful glad you like her."