Amy had undressed the child now down to one scant undergarment. She looked from her bony 72 little body to Jessie, and Amy’s eyes actually filled with tears.
“Aren’t you hungry, honey?” she asked the waif.
“Ain’t I hungry?” scoffed Henrietta. “Ain’t I always hungry? Mrs. Foley says I’m empty as a drum. She can’t fill me up. That’s how I came over here to-day.”
“Because she didn’t give you enough to eat?” demanded Amy, in rising wrath.
“Aw, she’d give it me if she had it. But the kids got to be fed first, ain’t they? And when you’ve got six of ’em and a man that drinks––”
“It is quite understandable, dear,” Jessie said, with more composure than her chum could display at the moment. “So you came over here––”
“To pick strawberries. Got a pail half full down there somewhere. The thunder scared me. Then I saw youse two up here and I thought you was the Carter ha’nt sure enough.”
“Let’s have some lunch,” cried Amy quickly.
She got up and began to bustle about. She opened the two boxes they had brought and set the vacuum bottle of hot cocoa on the bench. There were two cups and she insisted upon giving one of them to Henrietta.
“I don’t believe I could drink a drop or eat a morsel,” she said to Jessie, when the latter remonstrated. “I feel as if I was in the famine section 73 of Armenia or Russia or China. That poor little thing!”