"Maybe it wasn't nice soup, Peggy."
"But you said it was. You said that the Mother Bear made it out of the corn from the farmer's field, and the cock that the fox brought, and she seasoned it with herbs that she found at the edge of the forest. You said yourself it was dee-licious soup, Miss Anne."
She began to cry weakly.
"Dearie, don't. If I go down into the kitchen and warm some broth will you keep very still?"
"Yes. Only I don't want just broth. I want soup like the little bear had."
"Peggy, I am not a fairy godmother. I can't wave my wand and get things in the middle of the night."
"Well, anyhow, you can put it in a blue bowl, you said the little bear had his in a blue bowl, and you said he had ten crackers in it. I want ten crackers——"
The kitchen was warm and shadowy, with the light of a kerosene lamp above the cook-stove. Anne flitted about noiselessly, finding a little saucepan, finding a little blue bowl, breaking one cracker into ten bits to satisfy the insistent Peggy, stirring the bubbling broth with a spoon as she bent above it.
And as she stirred, she was thinking of Geoffrey Fox, not as she had thought of Richard, with pulses throbbing and heart fluttering, but calmly; of his book and of the little bust of Napoleon, and of the things that she had been reading about the war.
She poured the soup out of the saucepan, and set it steaming on a low tray. Then quietly she ascended the stairs. Geoffrey's door was wide open and his room was empty, but through the dimness of the long hall she discerned his figure, outlined against a wide window at the end. Back of him the world under the light of the waning moon showed black and white like a great wash drawing.