bara sat down and plied Susan with questions. How was Miss Somers
dressed? Were the sisters dressed alike? What were they having for
dinner at the Abbey? Above all, what could Miss Somers mean by saying
she would call at Farmer Price's cottage at six o'clock that evening?
"What do you think she could mean?" asked Barbara.

"What she said," replied Susan, "that she would be here at six
o'clock."

"That's plain enough," said Barbara, "but what else do you think she
meant? People, you know, often mean more or less than they say."

"They do," answered Susan, with a smile that made Barbara guess of
whom she was thinking.

But Bab did not mean Susan to know that she guessed, so she said, "I
suppose you think that Miss Somers meant more than she said?"

"I was not thinking of Miss Somers when I said what I did," replied
Susan.

There was a pause, and then Bab remarked, "How nice the soup looks!"

Susan had poured it into a basin, and as she dropped over it the
bright yellow marigold, it looked very tempting. She tasted it and
added a little salt; tasted it again, and added a little more. Then
she thought it was just as her mother liked it.

"Oh, I must taste it!" said Bab, seizing the basin greedily.

"Won't you take a spoon?" said Susan, trembling as she saw the big
mouthfuls Barbara took with a loud noise.

"Take a spoon, indeed!" exclaimed Bab. "How dare you, how dare you
speak so to me? 'Take a spoon, pig!' was what you meant to say! I'll
never enter your cottage again!" And she flounced out of the house.

Susan stood still, amazed at the beginning of Barbara's speech, but
her last words explained the sudden outburst.

Some years before this time, when Susan was a very little girl and
could scarcely speak, as she was eating a basin of bread and milk for
supper at the cottage door, a great pig came up and put his nose into
the basin. Susan was willing that the pig should have some share of
the bread and milk, but as she ate with a spoon and he with his large
mouth, she soon found that he was likely to have more than his share;
and she said to him, "Take a poon, pig." The saying became a proverb
in the village, and Susan's little companions quoted it when any one
claimed more than his share of anything good. Barbara, who was then
not Miss Barbara, but plain Bab, and who played with all the poor
children in the village, was often reproved by Susan's proverb. Susan,
as she grew up, forgot the childish saying, but