That was true; it took constant battling to keep coal on hand to replenish the fire. Mrs. Black was not interested in fuel, or, more correctly, she was interested in it to keep the supply low, and the result was that the swift-drawing cylinder stoves were precariously near being fireless half the time.
The matter of getting food for their convalescents kept Jessamy and Barbara's nerves quivering. Even when they sacrificed their own dinners, and toiled upstairs again with clumsy trays, hoping to get a warm chop, bowl of soup, or slice of beef to their mother or Phyllis, who was pathetically hungry and begged for plenty to eat, they failed in their object, though they went hungry themselves to attain it.
They bought chops and gave them to Mrs. Black to be cooked, bribing the cook to do them nicely; but the meat that had looked so succulent and juicy when it was cut, reappeared dry and blackened, with congealing fat around the edges of the plate, or else was so rare that Phyllis's hungry eyes filled with tears at the sight of it.
They bought beef and glass jars, and tried extracting the juice in cold water and salt, as Mrs. Wells taught them to do; and they got a broiling-fork and cooked chops over the coals in their stoves till the irascible old man below them and Mrs. Hardy, who disapproved of the Wyndhams' friendship for Tom, complained to the landlady of the odor of broiling. Jessamy began to have a little line between her eyes, and her sweet voice grew almost sharp from nervous strain, while Bab, though she really struggled hard to "be good," as she said, found her naturally quick temper roused beyond her ability to curb it in the effort to obtain justice, if not kindness, for her dear patients, whose recovery depended on proper care.
For a month the two poor little heroines struggled on in a daily round of petty annoyances that were not petty when one considered what they involved.
"We're getting awful, Jessamy," said Bab, tearfully, one night. "We're getting sharp-tempered, nervous, hard, and where shall we end?"
"Come in here, girls," called Phyllis's voice, still tremulous, from the next room. "Bring Tom."
Tom and Nixie had resumed their old quarters since the nurse had gone, and they both came as readily as they always did when Jessamy and Barbara called them.
"I heard what you said, Babbie," said Phyllis, motioning Tom to the seat of honor, and making Nixie welcome by her side in the big chair. "I heard you say you were getting horrid, and I've been seeing what a hard time you were having, and I want to tell you what we're going to do."