"This is a thousand times better than Ugo's boards and barrel-staves," said Esmay, triumphantly, and transferred the fuel to the hearth, where it presently burst into a cheerful flame. "There are three or four boxes of the stuff in the cellar, enough to last us all winter. Now for the lamp."
On the mantel-piece stood a shallow dish containing a small quantity of cotton-seed oil and a piece of lampwick. Esmay took down the vessel and inspected it with a calculating eye. "It will last until bedtime," she announced, and lit it with a spill of paper.
Nanna looked at her half-sister questioningly, but did not offer to speak. She had never seen Esmay just like this, and the change was especially noticeable after the silence and apathy of the past months. Her thoughts travelled back to the human link that had united them for so long—the woman whom each had called mother, although to Nanna it had been only a step-relationship. How impossible it had once seemed that there could be any new adjustment of life's machinery; how difficult the realization that nature is accustomed to settle these matters in her own time and way, and invariably does so! Yet here was Esmay suddenly returned to herself, moving about, alert and eager, knitting her brows over the one important problem of the moment, the question of supper.
"You'll have to make out with the firelight for a little while," said Esmay, picking up the rude lamp. "But you won't mind, dear?" She stooped, kissed her sister, and was gone again.
The elder woman felt her eyes brimming saltily. The girl, so far as years were concerned, might almost have been her daughter, since Nanna had been both wife and widow at seventeen. For all that, the sisterly relation was the true one between them; they were of the same strong breed, even if Esmay were only in half a daughter of the Doomsmen. Nanna had never been able to forget that her father's second wife had been of the blood of the despised House People. In spite of herself she had learned to love the dead Elena; she adored Esmay as a part of herself. A primitive emotion, but then Nanna was the elemental woman.
When Esmay returned she brought with her a bowl containing a small quantity of cottage cheese, hard and yellow with age. Surmounting the bowl was a plate upon which were some crusts of bread and a knuckle of ham, the latter being little more than the bare bone. A table stood in the middle of the room, a handsome piece of buhl-work. Esmay drew it forward to the fire and proceeded to arrange her feast. Scanty enough it seemed, but the cloth covering the table was of the finest damask, the plates that she took from a glazed cabinet were of the precious china of Sèvres, the knives and forks were in solid silver, and the drinking-cups of silver-gilt had been fashioned by a great artist. A strange contrast! beggar's fare served so royally; but hunger is not nice about trifles one way or the other. And so it was upon the viands that Nanna's attention was immediately concentrated. She glanced suspiciously at the cheese, despairingly at the knuckle-bone, and then said, solemnly:
"Tell me, Esmay, what does it mean? Where is Ugo?"
"Ugo has deserted us—like the rats," answered the girl. "And the situation—it is just this." She stopped and took a swallow of water. "It is three months now since she—the mother—slipped away from our arms, and of course the pension stopped with her. I gave the last handful of tokens to Ugo to settle up his wages. So you see I'm a beggar. It's a woman against the world, and one of us will have to devour the other. Lucky, isn't it, that I woke up desperately hungry? That means that I'll make a fight for it. Have the first bite."
"Esmay! You know that I have still my widow's rate."
"Yes, and I also know that it is barely enough to keep one body and soul together; the two of us would only starve by inches. No use, Nanna, we must take things as we find them. But isn't it strange—" She stopped abruptly and let her glance wander over the luxurious table-service, the gleaming surface of the silver reflecting her troubled eyes. She went on slowly: