dusk he packed his cakes into a basket procured for the purpose, covered them carefully with the table-cloth, tucked the coffee-pot in at one end, and marched whistling away toward home. He had been gone since quite early in the morning, had procured his own breakfast and dinner, according to previous arrangement, but was going home to tea. It is doubtful if there will ever anything look nicer to Tode than did that little clean room, and that little square table, with its bit of a white patched table-cloth, and its three plates and three knives, and its loaf of bread, and its very little lump of butter; a little black teakettle puffed and steamed its welcome, and a very funny little old brown ware teapot stood waiting on the hearth. There was that in this poor homeless boy's nature that took this picture in, and he felt it to his very heart. It was better a hundred times than the glitter and grandeur of the Euclid House, for didn't he know perfectly well that the little brown teapot on the hearth was waiting for _him_, and had anything ever waited for _him_ before? "Now we are all ready," chirped the old lady, cheerily, as Tode set down his basket and took off his cap. "Come Winny," and straightway there appeared from the little room of the kitchen a new character in this story of Tode's life, one whom the boy had never heard of before, and at whom he stared as startled as if she had suddenly blown up to them, fairy-like, from out the wide mouth of the black teakettle. "This is my Winny," explained she of the frill cap. "This is Jim's and Rick's sister. Dear me! I don't believe I ever thought to tell you they had a sister. She was to school when you was bobbing back and forth yesterday and to-day, and she was to bed when you came home last night." "Well she's here now," interrupted Winny. "Ready to be looked at, which she's likely to be, I should think. Let's have tea." Tode had been very uncertain as to whether he liked this new revelation of the family; but one word in the mother's sentence smoothed his face, and he sat down opposite the great gray eyes of the grave, self-possessed looking Winny with a satisfied air. "Now," said the mother, looking kindly on him, "I've always asked a blessing myself at my table, because Jim and Rick they don't neither of 'em lean that way, but if you would do it I think it would be all right and nice." Tode looked bewildered a moment; then adopted the very wise and straightforward course of saying: "I don't know what 'asking a blessing' means." "Don't you, now? Why it's to say a little prayer to God before you eat--just to thank him, you know." A little gleam of satisfaction shone in Tode's eyes. "Do good people do that?" he asked. "Why, yes--all the folks I ever lived with when I was a girl. Deacon Small's family, and Esquire Edward's family, and all, used to." "Every time they eat?" "Every single time."