At breakfast next morning—at dinner time—at supper—Rebecca Mary absented herself from the house. Aunt Olivia set on the meals regularly and waited with tightening heartstrings. It did not seem to occur to her to eat her own portions. She tasted no morsel of all the dainties she got together wistfully. At nightfall the second day she began to feel real alarm. She put on her bonnet and went to the minister's. He was rather a new minister, and the Plummers had always required a good deal of time to make acquaintance. But in the present stress of her need Aunt Olivia did not stop to think of that. “You must come over and—and do something,” she said, at the conclusion of her strange little story. “It seems to me it's time for the minister to step in.” “What can I do, Miss Plummer?” the embarrassed young man ejaculated, with a feeling of helplessness. “Talk to her,” groaned Aunt Olivia, in her agony. “Tell her what her duty is. Rebecca Mary might listen to the minister. All she's got to do is to take just one stitch to show her submission. It won't take but an instant. I've got supper all out on the kitchen table—I don't care if it's ten o'clock at night!” “It isn't a case for the minister. It's a case for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children!” fumed the minister's kind little wife inwardly. And she stole away in the twilight to deal with little Rebecca Mary herself. She came back to the minister by and by, red-eyed and fierce. “You needn't go over; I've been. It won't do any good, Robert. That poor, stiff-willed, set little thing is starving by inches!” “I think her aunt is, too!” “Well, perhaps—I can't help it, Robert, perhaps the—aunt—ought—to.” “My dear!—Felicia!” “I told you I couldn't help it. She is so hungry, Robert! If you had seen her—What do you think she was doing when I got there?” “Crying?” “Crying! She was laughing. I cried. She sat there under some grapevines watching a great white rooster eat his supper. His name, I think, is Thomas Jefferson.” “Yes, Thomas Jefferson,” agreed the minister, with the assurance of acquaintance. For Thomas Jefferson was one of his parishioners. “Well, she was laughing at him in the shakiest, hungriest little voice you ever heard. 'Is it good?' she says. 'It LOOKS good.' He was eating raw corn. 'If I could, I'd eat supper with you when you're VERY hungry, you don't mind eating things raw.' Then she saw me.” “Well?” “Well, I coaxed her, Robert. It didn't do any good. Tomorrow somebody must go there and interfere.” “She must be a remarkably strange child,” the minister mused. He was thinking of the holding-out powers of the three children he had a half- ownership in.