bulk—"I wonder if it hurts very much." She meant, to starve. A long vista of food-less days opened before her, and in their contemplation the weight in her heart grew very heavy indeed.

"We were GOING to have layer-cake for supper. I'm VERY fond of layer-cake," Rebecca Mary sighed, "I suppose, though, after a few weeks"—she shuddered—"I shall be glad to have ANYTHING—just common things, like crackers and skim-milk. Perhaps I shall want to eat a—horse. I've heard of folks—You get very unparticular when you're starving."

It was five o'clock. They WERE going to have supper at half past. She could hear the tea things clinking in the house. She stole up to a window. There was Aunt Olivia setting the layer-cake on the table. It looked plump and rich, and it was sugared on top.

"There's strawberry jam in between it," mused Rebecca Mary, regretfully. "I wish it was apple jelly. I could bear it better if it was apple jelly." But it was jam. And there was honey, too, to eat with Aunt Olivia's little fluffy biscuits. How very fond Rebecca Mary was of honey!

Aunt Olivia stood in the kitchen doorway and rang the supper bell in long, steady clangs just as usual. But no one responded just as usual, and by the token she knew Rebecca Mary had not taken the other stitch that lay between her and supper.

"She's a Plummer," sighed Aunt Olivia, inwardly, unrealizing her own Plummership, as little Rebecca Mary had unrealized hers. Each recognized only the other's. The pity that both must be Plummers!

Rebecca Mary stayed out of doors until bedtime. She made but one confidant.

"I've done it, Thomas Jefferson," she said, sadly. "You ought to be sorry for me, because if you hadn't crowed I shouldn't have sewed the hundred and oneth. But you're not really to BLAME," she added, hastily, mindful of Thomas Jefferson's feelings. "I should have done it sometime if you hadn't crowed. I knew it was coming. I suppose now I shall have to starve. You'd think it was pretty hard to starve, I guess, Thomas Jefferson."

Thomas Jefferson made certain gloomy responses in his throat to the effect that he was always starving; that any contributions on the spot in the way of corn kernels, wheat grains, angleworms—any little delicacies of the kind—would be welcome. And Rebecca Mary, understanding, led the way to the corn bin. In the dark hours that followed, the intimacy between the great white rooster and the little white girl took on tenderer tones.

At breakfast next morning—at dinner time—at supper—Rebecca Mary absented herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals regularly and waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem to occur to her to eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of all the dainties she got together wistfully. At nightfall the second day she began to feel real alarm. She put on her bonnet and went to the minister's. He was rather a new minister, and the Plummers had always required a good deal of time to make acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need Aunt Olivia did not stop to think of that.

"You must come over and—and do something," she said, at the conclusion of her strange little story. "It seems to me it's time for the minister to step in."

"What can I do, Miss Plummer?" the embarrassed young man ejaculated, with a feeling of helplessness.

"Talk to her," groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. "Tell her what her duty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's got to do is to take just one stitch to show her submission. It won't take but an instant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen table—I don't care if it's ten o'clock at night!"

"It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children!" fumed the minister's kind little wife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal with little Rebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by and by, red-eyed and fierce.

"You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert. That poor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!"

"I think her aunt is, too!"

"Well, perhaps—I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the—aunt—ought—to."

"My dear!—Felicia!"

"I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you had seen her—What do you think she was doing when I got there?"

"Crying?"

"Crying! She was laughing. I cried. She sat there under some grapevines watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name, I think, is Thomas Jefferson."

"Yes, Thomas Jefferson," agreed the minister, with the assurance of acquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners.

"Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voice you ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good.' He was eating raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me."

"Well?"

"Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow somebody must go there and interfere."

"She must be a remarkably strange child," the minister mused. He was thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he had a half-ownership in.

"I don't think Rebecca Mary IS a child, Robert. She must be fifty years old, at the least. She and her aunt are about the same age. Perhaps if her mother had lived, or she hadn't made so many sheets, or learned to knit and darn and cook—" The minister's kind little wife finished out her sentence with a sigh. She took up a little garment in dire straits to be mended. It suggested things to the minister.

"Can Rhoda darn?"

"RHODA!"

"Or make sheets and bread and things?"

"Robert, don't you feel well? Where is the pain?" But the laugh in the pleasant blue eyes died out suddenly. Little Rebecca Mary lay too heavy on the minister's wife's heart for mirth.

Aunt Olivia went into Rebecca Mary's room in the middle of the night. She had been in three times before.

"She looks thinner than she did last time," Aunt Olivia murmured, distressedly. "Tomorrow night—how long do children live without eating? It's four meals now—four meals is a great many for a little thin thing to go without!" Aunt Olivia had been without four meals too; she would have been able to judge how it felt—if she had remembered that part. She stood in her scant, long nightgown, gazing down at the little sleeper. The veil was down and her heart was in her eyes.

Rebecca Mary threw out her arm and sighed. "It LOOKS good, Thomas Jefferson," she murmured. "When you're VERY hungry you can eat things raw." Suddenly the child sat up in bed, wide-eyed and wild. She did not seem to see Aunt Olivia at all.

"Once I ate a pie!" she cried. "It wasn't a whole one, but I should eat a whole one now—I think I should eat the PLATE now." She swayed back and forth weakly, awake and not awake.

"Once I ate a layer-cake. There was jam in it. I wouldn't care if it was apple jelly in it now—I'd LIKE apple jelly in it now. Once I ate a pudding and a doughnut a-n-d—a—a—I think it was a horse. I'd eat a horse now. Hush! Don't tell Aunt Olivia, but I'm going to eat—to—e-at—Thom-as—Jeffer—" She swayed back on the pillows again. Aunt Olivia shook her in an agony of fear—she was so white—she lay so still.

"Rebecca! Rebecca Mary! Rebecca Mary PLUMMER!" Aunt Olivia shrilled in her ear. "You get right out o' bed this minute and come downstairs and eat your supper! It's high time you had something in your stomach—I don't care if it's twelve o'clock. You get right out o' bed REBECCA MARY!"

Aunt Olivia had the limp little figure in her arms, shaking it gently again and again. Rebecca's startled eyes flew open. In that instant was born inspiration in the brain of Aunt Olivia. She thought of an appeal to make.

"Do you want ME to starve, too? Right here before your face and eyes? I haven't eat a mouthful since you did, and I shan't till you DO."

Rebecca Mary