“MAMMA,” said Mabel, “I am _very_ glad we are rich!”
Mamma looked up with a little smile; she was patching Freddy’s
trousers, and had just been wondering whether they would last till
spring, and if not, how she was to get him another pair.
“Yes, Mabel dear,” she said. “We are very rich in some things. What
were you thinking about when you spoke?”
“I was thinking how dreadful it would be to be hungry,” replied Mabel,
thoughtfully. “I mean terribly hungry, like people in a shipwreck. Why,
just to be a little hungry, the way Freddy and I get sometimes, makes
me feel all queer inside; and besides, it makes me cross and horrid. So
then I wondered how it would feel to be really hungry, and not to be
sure that you were going to have good bread and milk for supper; and
that made me feel so glad that we were rich.”
Mamma was silent for a few minutes. She was thinking of a house to
which she took some work the day before. She had passed through the
dining-room, and there, at the carved table, sat a little girl with her
supper before her,—delicate rolls, and cold chicken, and raspberry jam,
and hot cocoa in a china cup all covered with roses, and creamy milk in
a great silver mug.
The child was about Mabel’s age, but her face wore a very different
expression. She had pushed her chair back, and was crying out that she
would not eat cold chicken. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, she _wouldn’t_!
so there now! The nurse might just as well take it away, and she was a
horrid cross old thing! Mamma was going to have partridge for dinner,
and she wanted some of that, and she would have it.
Then, when the nurse shook her white-capped head and said, “No miss!
your Mamma said you were to have the chicken; so now eat it, like a
good girl, and you shall have some jam,” the child flew at her like a
little fury, and slapped and pinched her. That was all that Mabel’s
Mamma saw, but as she thought of it, and then looked at her little
maiden, with a sweet face smiling over her blue pinafore, she smiled
again, very tenderly, and said,—
“Yes, dear, it is a very good thing to be rich, if it is the right kind
of riches. Go now, darling, and get the bread and milk; set the table,
and then call Freddy in to supper.”