lins. Is you lost?--Peter, you Peter Collins! I want
know who on earth this child is you done brung here. You always doing
some outlandish thing! Who is she?"

"How the thunder I know?" muttered her husband, pulling at his beard.

Anne stood bewildered. This was home and yet it was not home. Her lips
quivered, she clasped Honey-Sweet tighter, and turned toward the door to
go--where? Everything turned black around her, the floor seemed to give
way under her feet, and in another moment she and Honey-Sweet were in a
forlorn little heap on the floor and she was sobbing as if her heart
would break.

"I want home! I want somebody!" she wailed piteously.

Mrs. Collins sat down on the floor and drew the weeping child into her
arms.

"Thar, thar, honey! don't you cry! don't you cry!" she said soothingly.
"Po' little thing! Le' me take off your hat! Why, yo' little hands is
jest as cold! Lizzie, set the kettle on front of the stove. Jake, you
put some wood in the fire. Now, honey, you set right in this
rocking-chair by the stove and le' me wrap a shawl round you. I'll have
you some cambric tea and fry you some hot cakes in a jiffy. A good
supper'll het you up. I'd take shame to myself, Peter Collins, if I was
you"--she scowled at her husband as she bustled about--"a gre't big man
like you skeerin' a po' little thing like that! What diff'rence do it
make who she is or whar she come from? Anybody with two eyes in his head
can see she's jest a po' little lost thing. You gre't gawk, you!"

"What is I done, I'd like to know?" inquired Mr. Collins, helplessly.

Anne had not realized that she was hungry until Mrs. Collins set before
her a plateful of hot crisp cakes. The good woman spread them with
butter and opened a jar of 'company' sweetmeats,--crisp watermelon rind,
cut in leaf, star, and fish shapes. While serving supper, Mrs. Collins
chattered on in a soft, friendly voice.

"I see how 'twas. You knowed this place before we come here. We been
here two year come next Christmas. Done bought the place. Fust time any
of our folks is ever owned land. Always been renters and share-hands,
movin' to new places soon as we wore out ol' ones. I tell my ol' man
it's goin' to come mighty hard on him now that he's got a place of his
own that's got to be tooken care of."

By this time, the color had come back to Anne's face and she was smiling
and stroking the sleek black-and-white cat that had jumped in her lap.

"What is the little g