"Is that you, Mimi?" she said huskily, "I didn't know you cared as much as—oh, what is that?"
Her hand had fallen on the little bull-dog's smooth, stiff coat and she started up in surprise. Caroline smiled shyly into her big, stained gray eyes.
"It's all right—Henry D. never bites—do you feel bad?" she asked.
The girl pushed back a handful of crinkly, chestnut hair from her damp face and rose, shaking out her skirts.
"Y—yes," she said, frankly, "yes, I do. Do you know why?"
"No. Why?" Caroline inquired.
"Because I can't make huckleberry bread," the girl assured her solemnly. "I—I've been trying all the morning. Look in there."
Caroline peered into the little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a case of kitchen sundries, half unpacked.
"You did get it all over, didn't you?" she observed cheerfully, noting the prints of doughy fingers on oven and chairs and the burned, odorous wreck, resting in soggy isolation in the middle of the floor. "You cooked it a little too much, maybe."
"Maybe," the girl assented listlessly. "I was going to have it for luncheon. The woman promised to be here by ten o'clock, and I got the breakfast well enough—after a fashion—but she hasn't come, and I'm s-so hungry!"