Their hostess occupied the seat of honor at the head of the table while Betty took the foot, proudly presiding over the carving of the chicken.
“I don’t know anything about this business,” she admitted, as she severed a brownly roasted leg from the bird with the aid of a carving knife of finest steel.
This was one thing Betty, and the other girls, too, had noticed about the contents of the little cabin. Although the furnishings were scant, they were all of good material.
The crockery—what there was of it—was of the finest china, and the cutlery—what there was of that—was tempered steel and real silver. Like the thoroughbred old lady, they were genuine, seeming strangely incongruous and out of place in the tumbled-down little cabin.
“She’s a mystery,” thought Betty, as she struggled nobly with the chicken. “I’d give a good deal to know something about her past. I reckon she’s had an interesting one.”
Take it all in all, it was one of the most delicious dinners that the Outdoor Girls had ever sat down to, and, as Mollie afterward observed: “That was saying something.”
As for their quaint little hostess, it is safe to say she had not been given such a treat in a long while.
She ate as though she were famished, and Betty realized with a new rush of pity that what she had at first suspected was true, the old lady had been really hungry—half fed.
Yielding to the girl’s eager entreaties she even took a second piece of Mrs. Joyce’s wondrous pie, and when she had finished she sat back with a sigh, looking at the girls plaintively.
“I know I shall be sick,” she said. “I have not eaten so much in——” she caught herself up suddenly as though sorry for the admission and went on talking hurriedly, trying to cover it up with a flow of words.