Bella heard little Margery crying softly in the garden. The child was hungry too, she knew. She was but four years old, and she needed something. Bella's heart ached for her baby sister, the little one who had been the pet and darling of the household during her mother's lifetime. As she listened to the plaintive crying, the thought would come into her mind, "What would her mother feel if she knew that her baby was hungry, and neglected and unhappy?" and at last she could bear the thought and the crying no longer. Summoning up all her courage, she went out to the scullery, where her aunt was bustling about, grumbling to herself all the time. "Aunt Emma," she said half-timidly, "may I give Margery something to eat? She is so hungry. I hear her crying." Miss Hender did not answer. "Have you seen the poker?" she demanded, impatiently. "One of those boys has walked off with it, I'll be bound! and here is my fire going out for the want of a stirring up. How anybody can be expected to get on where there's a parcel of children----" "I am sure the boys haven't had it, Aunt Emma," declared Bella patiently. "I saw it here just now, and they haven't moved from the garden; they've been reading all the morning." "Well, I can't waste any more time," cried the angry woman, "I'll take this," and impetuously catching up the stick that she used for lifting the clothes out of the copper, she thrust it into the fire. Bella stood by wondering and embarrassed. The fire burnt up the better for its stirring, it is true, but the stick was ruined for its usual purpose. Blackened and charred as it was, it was only fit for putting back into the fire again as fuel. Even to Bella's childish mind the foolishness and wickedness of such a hasty action was only too plain. A moment later, when the copper-stick itself was wanted, it was unusable, and there was no other at hand. One would have to be bought, or made, or found. While looking for something that would do in place of it, the poker was found lying on the table, amongst the pans and things littered there. This only made Miss Hender more irritable than before. "To think it should have been there all the time, and me wasting all that time looking for it!" she exclaimed, as indignantly as though the poker were actually to blame. In the corner of the scullery was a chair with one leg loose, waiting for the father to find time to mend it. Miss Hender's flashing eye fell on this, and seizing the leg and plunging it into the boiling copper, she lifted out the clothes into the washing-tray with it. The chair leg was dusty and it was covered with yellow varnish and paint, but in her foolish and senseless rage she never stopped to think of this, and for months and months after the stains on the clothing stood as a reminder and a reproach, for not even time and frequent washings could remove them altogether.