Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/194

 the girl assured her solemnly. "I—I've been trying all the morning. Look in there."

Caroline peered into the little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a case of kitchen sundries, half unpacked.

"You did get it all over, didn't you?" she observed cheerfully, noting the prints of doughy fingers on oven and chairs and the burned, odorous wreck, resting in soggy isolation in the middle of the floor. "You cooked it a little too much, maybe."

"Maybe," the girl assented listlessly. "I was going to have it for luncheon. The woman promised to be here by ten o'clock, and I got the breakfast well enough—after a fashion—but she hasn't come, and I'm s-so hungry!"

Her eyes filled again. "It's simply filthy here," she murmured. "Do you know anybody we could depend on—oh, how stupid of me, of course you don't."

"There's Luella," Caroline suggested, "she's right near here, and she makes lovely huckleberry bread. Shall I go get her? Old Gr'—