-sweetened while
cooking, you know."

"Oh, I make two kinds of cocoa, do I?" asked Cousin Helen.

"Yes--er--that is, in two ways."

"Hm-m; and coffee and the cereal drink, making four in all?" continued
Cousin Helen, with ominous sweetness.

Tom stirred uneasily and threw a sharp glance into his cousin's face.

"Well--er--it does seem a good many; but--well, mother did, you know,
and we might as well have what we want, as something different, I
suppose," he finished, with vague uneasiness.

"Oh, certainly, who would mind a small thing like that!" laughed Miss
Mortimer, a queer little gleam in her eyes.

This was but the beginning. On the pantry-shelf were four kinds of
cereals. Carrie explained that all were served each morning, for the
family could n't agree on any particular one. As for eggs; Tom always
had to have his dropped on a slice of toast; the twins liked theirs
scrambled; but Carrie herself preferred hers boiled in the shell.
Apple-pie must always be in the house for Tom, though it so happened,
strangely enough, Carrie said, that no one else cared for it at all.

"Mother was always making apple-pie," laughed Carrie apologetically.
"You see, they get stale so quickly, and Tom is the only one to eat
them, they have to be made pretty often--one at a time, of course."

Bread, rolls, pastry, meat, vegetables--each had its own particular
story, backed always by that ever-silencing "mother did," until Miss
Mortimer was almost in despair. Sometimes she made a feeble protest,
but the children were so good-natured, so entirely unaware that they
were asking anything out of the ordinary, and so amazed at any proposed
deviation from the established rules, that her protests fell powerless
at their feet.

"Mother did"--"mother did"--"mother did," Miss Mortimer would murmur
wearily to herself each day, until she came to think of the tired
little woman upstairs as "Mother Did" instead of "Aunt Maria." "No
wonder 'Mother Did' fell ill," she thought bitterly. "Who wouldn't!"

The weeks passed, as weeks will--even the dreariest of them--and the
day came for Cousin Helen to go home, Mrs. Dudley being now quite her
old self. Loud were the regrets at her departure, and overwhelming
were the thanks and blessings showered in loving profusion; but it was
two weeks later, when Tom, Carrie, and the twins each sent her a
birthday present, that an idea came to Miss Mortimer. She determined
at once to carry it out, eve