beautiful
golden clover-honey in the comb, and perhaps that was the very best of
all.

"Never, never, did I eat anything so good as this supper!" Father Blair
said solemnly, as he ate his fourth biscuit. "That oyster stew--those
potatoes--the cheese dreams--"

"What a greedy father!" said Mildred. "And you never said a word about
the cocoa--"

"Nor about the scrambled eggs--" said Brownie, eagerly.

"But I ate them all," said her father. "I ate everything I was given,
and I should like to eat them all again! Next time we come, have twice
as much of everything, won't you?"

But everybody else said that they couldn't have eaten one single crumb
more. And they knew perfectly well that Father Blair couldn't, either.

Then everybody helped wash the dishes and put things away, and Farmer
Dunn came over to put out the fires and shut the doors; and presently it
was all dark in the House in the Woods, and so still that, far, far off,
you could hear the sound of the singing of the boys and girls as they
rode home across the snow.

CHAPTER III

JACK'S SCHOOL-LUNCHEONS

"Mother," said Jack, one evening, "I'd like to take my lunch to school
for the next few weeks; all the fellows are going to, so we can have
more time for class elections and so on. Do you suppose Norah could put
up one for me every morning?"

"Why not let Mildred put it up? Her school is so near that she does not
have to start till long after you do; and then, Jack, you could easily
pay her for her trouble by helping her with her Latin; you know she is
bothered with that just now."

Mildred was overjoyed at the suggestion of the bargain. "Oh, Jack! I'll
do you up the most beautiful luncheons in the world if you will only
help me with that horrid Caesar. I'm just as stupid as I can be about it.
What do you like best to eat in all the world?"

Jack said he wasn't very particular as long as he had plenty of pie and
cake and pickles and pudding and ice-cream; Mildred laughed, and said
she guessed she could manage to think up a few other things beside.

So the very next morning she put up the first luncheon. But, alas, Norah
had no cold meat to slice--only bits of beefsteak left from dinner; and
not a single piece of cake. All she could find for lunch was some plain
bread and butter, which she cut rather thick, a hard-boiled egg, and an
apple. "Pretty poor," she sighed, as she saw him trudge off with the box
under his arm.

That afternoon, when