Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/40

 20  starved if Bettie had not fed them and Donald's dog knew that if no one else remembered his bone kind Bettie would bear it in mind.

The boys' legs were round and sturdy, but Bettie's were very much like pipe stems.

"I don't have time to get fat," Bettie would say. "But you don't need to worry about me. I think I'm the healthiest person in the house. At least I'm the only one that hasn't had to have breakfast in bed this week."

Neither Marjory nor Mabel appeared during the morning to dig their share of the weeds, but when school was out that afternoon they were all on hand with their baskets.

"I had to stay," said Mabel, who was the last to arrive. "I missed two words in spelling." "What were they?" asked Marjory.

Parachute' and 'dandelion'—I hate dandelions, anyway. I don't know what