"I wa'n't a cryin'!" said the girl. "Nobody never see me a cryin' for nothin'!"
"You haven't filled your basket to-day."
She gave an askant look into it, and was silent.
"How came that?"
"'Cause! — I was tired, and I hadn't had no dinner; and I don't care! That's why I wished the thunder would kill me. I can't live without eatin'."
"Have you had nothing since morning?"
"I don't get no mornin' — I have to get my dinner."
"And you could get none to-day?"
"No. Everything was eat up."
"Everything isn't quite eaten up," said Winthrop, rummaging in his coat pocket; and he brought forth thence a paper of figs which he gave the girl. "He isn't so short of means as I feared, after all," thought Elizabeth, "since he can afford to carry figs about in his pocket." But she did not know that the young gentleman had made his own dinner off that paper of figs; and she could not guess it, ever when from his other coat pocket he produced some biscuits which were likewise given to eke out the figs in the little black girl's dinner. She was presently roused to very great marvelling again by seeing him apply his foot to another box, one without a clean side, and roll it over half the length of the shed for the child to sit upon.