"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 first time in his life, forgotten to eat breakfast, and nothing could have been more welcome in his eyes than this plentiful supply of food. "Better pay her for it," he whispered to Joe, "an' then she'll be likely to bring on more. I could eat all she's got there, an' not half try." Joe did as his companion wished; but the old lady positively refused to take the money until the boy urged her in dumb show, when, with the air of one who complies with a request against her will, she took from Master Potter's outstretched hand a dime. Plums had not waited for this business to be finished before he began the attack, and when Joe turned he saw that his comrade had assumed a position of supreme content, with three seed-cakes in one hand, and a large slice of ham in the other.