"I don't know anything about it," Caroline said coldly. "I'm waiting for someone to come, myself. There's nobody here. I don't live here at all."
With that, and because she was embarrassed and cross and hungry, she opened her book ostentatiously and affected to read busily. The girl frowned angrily a moment, then gave a foreign little shrug of her shoulder and settled herself in a low rocking chair near the bread, her hands loose in her lap. The old clock ticked reprovingly through the hot and conscious silence of the room, but there was no other sound. Caroline could not have lifted her eyes to save her life, and the older girl's lips curled scornfully: her eyelids were sullen.
After a few moments of this intolerable stillness the same low rumbling sound was heard again, this time moving nearer. Something was advancing to the kitchen from a farther room, and as they looked instinctively at the door it pushed open slowly and a sort of foot rest upon wheels appeared; two large wheels followed, and a woman pushed her chair into the kitchen. She was a large, good-looking woman, middle-aged, and not weak, evidently, for she managed her chair easily with one hand; the other held a slice of pink ham on a white platter in her lap. Her face, under a placid parting of grayish fair hair, was rather high colored than of an invalid pallor, her chest broad and deep, her blue eyes at once kind and keen. She wore a neat dress of dark-blue print with a prim, old-fashioned linen collar and a blue bow, a white apron around her plump waist almost covered the patchwork quilt that wrapped her from the hips down: a shell comb showed slightly above her crisp hair. As she faced her two angry guests a smile of unmistakable sincerity and delight greeted them.
"Well, of all things!" she cried eagerly; "how long, 'you been here?"
Caroline waited sulkily for her social superior; the girl was undoubtedly a "young lady." Her errand was soon explained, her question asked.
"Something to eat?" echoed their delighted hostess. "Well, I should think so! I'm just getting my dinner. Of course I'm all alone, this time o' day, but I always say if I'm good enough to cook it well, I'm good enough to eat it comfortable, and I sit down to table just's if the family was all here. There's some that believe in a bite and a bit, when the men folks are out, but I never did. And then—" she blushed shyly like a girl—"I always want to feel ready in case anyone should come. Just in case. He says it's foolishness, but look at you two, now! How'd I feel if I wasn't prepared! And once—in April, 'twas—a sewing-machine man came. I had ham then, too."
She beamed on them, frankly overjoyed in their company, and in the mellow warmth of that honest pleasure the fog and anger in the room rolled back like mist under a noon sun, and Caroline unbent, named herself, and mentioned her donkey and their woodland journey.
"You don't say!"
Quick as a flash their hostess was across the room and peering through the window.
"Well, of all the funny little fellows! I never saw one before, that I remember. Aren't those red tossels neat, though! I s'pose he's tame?"