ty managed to keep
them without dinner certainly at the rate of once or twice a week. She
always had an excellent excuse. Either the boiler was out of gear, or the
range would not draught properly, or the coals were out, or the butcher
had failed to come. Sometimes the children managed to have jam with their
bread-and-butter, and then they considered that they had a very fine meal
indeed. It mattered little to them what sort of food they had if they
only had enough; but sometimes they had not even enough. This more
constantly happened in the winter than in the summer, for in the summer
there was always plenty of milk and always plenty of fruit and
vegetables.

When Betty heard that Miss Tredgold was coming to stay she immediately
gave Verena notice. This was nothing at all extraordinary, for Betty gave
notice whenever anything annoyed her. She never dreamed of acting up to
her own words, so that nobody minded Betty's repeated notices. But on the
morning of the day when Miss Tredgold was expected, Betty told nurse that
she was about to give a real, earnest notice at last.

"I am going," she said. "I go this day month. I march out of this house,
and never come back--no, not even if a dook was to conduct me to the
hymeneal altar."

Betty was always great on the subject of dukes and marquises. She was
seldom so low in health as to condescend to a "hearl," and there had even
been a moment when she got herself to believe that royalty might aspire
to her hand.

"She must be really going," said Verena when nurse repeated Betty's
speech. "She would not say that about the duke if she was not."

"You leave her alone," said nurse. "But she's dreadful put out, Miss
Renny; there's no doubt of that. I doubt if she'll cook any dinner for
Miss Tredgold."

Verena, Pauline, and Penelope now rushed round to the kitchen premises.
They were nervous, but at the same time they were brave. They must see
what Betty intended to do. They burst open the door. The kitchen was not
too clean. It was a spacious apartment, which in the days when the old
house belonged to rich people was well taken care of, and must have sent
forth glorious fires--fires meant to cook noble joints. On the present
occasion the fire was dead out; the range looked a dull gray, piles of
ashes lying in a forlorn manner at its feet. Betty was sitting at the
opposite side of the kitchen, her feet on one chair and her capacious
person on another. She was busily engaged dev