in directly, Mrs. Hearne,' she called out. Then the
triumvirate broke into a run, and vanished along the road before the eyes
of the bewildered woman.

'What are we going to do?' asked Angela, panting, when they once more
climbed the gate at the bottom of the nine-acre field.

'We're going straight to the larder, straight as we can go; and then,
we're just going to bag all the food we can carry,' answered Jean, in
an odd, determined sort of tone. 'Did you see the look on that woman's
face when you gave her the money, Babe? I believe--I believe they've all
had nothing to eat for _weeks_! It's--it's horrible to think of!'

There was a sob in her voice, and the other two were silent from sympathy
and a kind of awkwardness. They had never heard Jean talk like this
before, and it finished the work begun by the Canon's address. There
was not the thought of a scruple in either of their minds when they
arrived at the back of the house, and Jean bade them climb up by the
water-butt and get into the larder through the open window.

'There's sure to be a hook you can undo so as to move the wire netting
aside,' she told them. 'If we went round to the door, some one might make
a fuss; and there's no time for fusses.'

'Jean knows everything,' murmured Angela, as she found the hook and
squeezed successfully through the window.

'What shall we take?' whispered Babs, slipping after her into the dimly
lighted larder. 'I think they'd like jam tart and plum-pudding, don't you?'

She shifted the two delicacies dearest to her heart on to one dish, and
handed it up to Jean, who stood poised uncertainly on the edge of the
water-butt.

'The jelly and the cranberry pie look rather nice,' said Angela, her own
mouth watering for them, as she passed them out to Jean.

'Can't you find something substantial?' urged Jean, when she had deposited
the second load on the ground beside the water-butt.

The two children in the larder looked round at the well-stocked shelves.
There was cold beef, to be sure, and a large tureen of mutton broth; but
these did not strike them as being at all the sort of present that any
one would like to have.

'Apple dumplings,' settled Angela, swiftly, as her eye fell on a large
dish full of them; and they handed the apple dumplings after the other
things, and then followed them by way of the water-butt to the impatient
Jean, who had already loaded herself with the jelly and the cranberry pie.

'Come along!' sai