“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 of Armenia or Russia or China. That poor little thing!”
She insisted upon giving Henrietta the bulk of her own lunch and all the tidbits she could find in Jessie’s lunchbox. The freckle-faced girl began systematically to fill up the hollow with which she was accredited. It was evident that the good food made Henrietta quite forget the so-called ha’nts.
The rain continued to fall torrentially; the thunder muttered almost continually, but in the distance; again and again the lightning flashed.
Jessie Norwood fed the fire on the hearth until the warmth of it could be felt to the farther end of the big old kitchen. She and Henrietta were fast becoming dried, and their outer clothing could soon be put on again.
“I wonder if Momsy was scared when the storm broke,” ruminated Jessie. “She thinks the aerial may attract lightning.”