"Thank you. I'll tell Mrs. Keith about it, and send you word directly after breakfast."
"All right. I guess she'll come if you want her."
She was scarcely gone when the door at the foot of the stairs opened, and Mildred's pale face appeared.
"Aunt Wealthy, it is too bad to see you at work here. Let me get breakfast. I do think I can. The children are dressing each other, mother has the baby and won't let me do anything up there."
"Well, you'll not find me a whit more tractable," returned Miss Stanhope. "Let you get breakfast, indeed! I'd be worse than a brute if I did.
"Go into the sitting-room and lie down on the lounge," she continued taking up one of the finest tomatoes and beginning to divest it of its skin, "and I'll bring you something presently that I really hope will taste good to you.
"That Miss Heavycap brought you a present. She's not over refined, but good-hearted, I think, in spite of her rude ways and rough talk."
"Yes, they have been very kind and neighborly; I wish they were the sort of people one could enjoy being intimate with," Mildred said, languidly. "Auntie, let me skin those tomatoes."
"Child, you look ready to drop."
"Do I?" smiling faintly, "well, I'll sit down to it. I really can't let you do everything. How fine and large these are; are they what Rhoda Jane brought?"