throwin'
them up all the time. Say, Plums, look at the old woman now! Why didn't
I think of cuddlin' the princess in that style?"

Their hostess, having made the little maid more presentable, gathered
the child to her breast, as she rocked to and fro in a capacious
armchair, singing a lullaby, which speedily closed the two brown eyes in
slumber.

"I shouldn't feel very bad if the old woman served me in the same way,"
Master Plummer said, with a long-drawn sigh, as he straightened himself
up in the wooden chair. "I'd rather lay right down on the floor an' go
to sleep than do anything else I know of."

"But you mustn't, Plums, you mustn't," Joe whispered, nervously. "If you
should do anything like that she'd think we was more'n half fools, both
of us."

"Seid ihr kinder hungrich?"

The old lady spoke so abruptly that the boys started as if in alarm,
both looking at her with such a puzzled expression on their faces that
she must have known they failed to understand the question.

"Perhaps she thinks we can't pay our way," Plums whispered. "You might
let her know we've got money, even if you can't do anything better."

Joe acted upon the suggestion at once by taking several coins from his
pocket, holding them towards the old lady.

She shook her head and smiled cheerily. Then, laying the princess on a
chintz-covered couch without disturbing the child's slumbers, she left
the room.

Again was Master Potter surprised by the apparently careless, yet deft
manner in which she handled the child, and he said, in a tone of
admiration to his friend:

"Don't it jest knock your eye out to see the way she fools with the
princess, an' yet the little thing seems to like it? If I'd done half as
much as that she'd be screechin' blue murder by this time."

"Women know how to take care of kids better'n boys do, though I ain't
any slouch at it, 'cause I've tried it so many times down to Mis'
Carter's."

"I notice you couldn't stop her from cryin' last night."

"I didn't try, did I? Perhaps if you hadn't sent me racin' all over the
city for milk I might'er done somethin'."

This conversation was interrupted by the German lady, who returned,
bringing two plates, one of which was heaped high with seed-cakes, and
the other filled with generous slices of boiled ham.

If a boy's mouth ever did water, Plums was in that peculiar condition
just at that moment.

Alarmed by the news which Dan Fernald brought, he had, for perhaps the