ay."

"My mother died, too," she returned softly, "and then grandmama."

For a moment there was a pause. Then I said with a kind of stubborn
pride, "I ran away."

The sadness passed from her and she turned on me in a glow of animation.
"Oh, I should just love dearly to run away!" she exclaimed.

"You couldn't. You're a girl."

"I could, too, if I chose."

"Then why don't you choose?"

"Because of Aunt Mitty and Aunt Matoaca. They haven't anybody but me."

"I left my father," I replied proudly, "and I didn't care one single
bit. That's the trouble with girls. They're always caring."

"Well, I'm not caring for you," she retorted with crushing effect,
shaking back the soft cloud of hair on her shoulders.

"Boys don't care," I rejoined with indifference, taking up my market
basket.

She detained me with a glance. "There's one thing they care
about--dreadfully," she said.

"No, there ain't."

Without replying in words she went over to the stove, and standing on
tiptoe, gingerly removed a hot plum cake, small and round and shaped
like a muffin, from the smoking oven.

"I reckon they care about plum cake," she remarked tauntingly, and as
she held it toward me it smelt divinely.

But my pride was in arms, for I remembered the cup of milk she had
refused disdainfully more than three years ago in our little kitchen.

"No, they don't," I replied with a stoicism that might have added lustre
to a nobler cause.

In my heart I was hoping that she would drop the cake into my basket in
spite of my protest, not only sparing my pride by an act of magnanimity,
but allowing me at the same time the felicity of munching the plums on
my way back to the Old Market. But the next moment, to my surprise and
indignation, she took a generous bite of the very dainty she had offered
me, making, while she ate it, provoking faces of a rapturous enjoyment.

I was lingering in the doorway with a scornful yet fascinated gaze on
the diminishing cake, when the pink-turbaned cook, who had gone out to
empty a basin of pea shells, entered and resumed her querulous abuse.

"De bes' thing you kin do is ter clear out," she said, "you en yo'
car'ots. He ain' fit'n fur you ter tu'n yo' eyes on, honey," she added
to the child, "en I don' reckon yo' ma would let yo' wipe yo' foot on
'im ef'n she 'uz alive. Yes'm, Miss Mitty, I'se a-comin'!"

Her voice rose high in response to a call from the house, but before she
could leave the kitchen, the d