y had undressed the child now down to one scant undergarment. She
looked from her bony little body to Jessie, and Amy's eyes actually
filled with tears.

"Aren't you hungry, honey?" she asked the waif.

"Ain't I hungry?" scoffed Henrietta. "Ain't I always hungry? Mrs.
Foley says I'm empty as a drum. She can't fill me up. That's how I
came over here to-day."

"Because she didn't give you enough to eat?" demanded Amy, in rising
wrath.

"Aw, she'd give it me if she had it. But the kids got to be fed first,
ain't they? And when you've got six of 'em and a man that drinks----"

"It is quite understandable, dear," Jessie said, with more composure
than her chum could display at the moment. "So you came over
here----"

"To pick strawberries. Got a pail half full down there somewhere. The
thunder scared me. Then I saw youse two up here and I thought you was
the Carter ha'nt sure enough."

"Let's have some lunch," cried Amy quickly.

She got up and began to bustle about. She opened the two boxes they
had brought and set the vacuum bottle of hot cocoa on the bench. There
were two cups and she insisted upon giving one of them to Henrietta.

"I don't believe I could drink a drop or eat a morsel," she said to
Jessie, when the latter remonstrated. "I feel as if I was in the
famine section of Armenia or Russia or China. That poor little
thing!"

She insisted upon giving Henrietta the bulk of her own lunch and all
the tidbits she could find in Jessie's lunchbox. The freckle-faced
girl began systematically to fill up the hollow with which she was
accredited. It was evident that the good food made Henrietta quite
forget the so-called ha'nts.

The rain continued to fall torrentially; the thunder muttered almost
continually, but in the distance; again and again the lightning
flashed.

Jessie Norwood fed the fire on the hearth until the warmth of it could
be felt to the farther end of the big old kitchen. She and Henrietta
were fast becoming dried, and their outer clothing could soon be put
on again.

"I wonder if Momsy was scared when the storm broke," ruminated Jessie.
"She thinks the aerial may attract lightning."

"Nothing like that," declared Amy cheerfully. "But I wish we had a
radio sending set here and could talk to her----"

"Ow! What's that?"

Even Henrietta stopped eating, looked upward at the dusty ceiling, and
listened for a repetition of the sound. It came in a moment--a sudden
thump--then the thrashing a