"What?" queried the voice.
"Nothing," said the child.
She took a single piece of bread from a box, toasted it for a moment, put it on a plate, poured a cup of coffee, dished out a mess of the porridge, and carried it all into the next room. There, an elderly woman, muttering and scolding to herself as she lay on a couch, received it.
"Too bad the rheumatics bother so, gran'," said the child, consolingly. "If they last to-morrow, I'm going to tell old Witham and make him send you something good to eat."
"No, you won't," exclaimed the woman sharply. "Much he cares! Says he pays me too much now for cooking; and he says I've got money tucked away here. Wish I had."
"So do I," said the child. "I'd buy the biggest doll you ever saw."
"Fudge!" cried the old woman. "Why, you've outgrown 'em long ago."
"I know it," said the child, solemnly. "But I'd just like to have a big one, once."
"And so you should, if we had our rights," cried Grannie Thornton, lifting herself up on an elbow, with a jerk that brought forth an exclamation of pain. "If he didn't own everything. If he didn't get it all—what we used to own."
"Old Ellison?" suggested the child.