“Mamma,” said Mabel, “I am very glad we are rich!”

Mamma looked up with a little smile; she was patching Freddy’s trousers, and had just been wondering whether they would last till spring, and if not, how she was to get him another pair.

“Yes, Mabel dear,” she said. “We are very rich in some things. What were you thinking about when you spoke?”

“I was thinking how dreadful it would be to be hungry,” replied Mabel, thoughtfully. “I mean terribly hungry, like people in a shipwreck. Why, just to be a little hungry, the way Freddy and I get sometimes, makes me feel all queer inside; and besides, it makes me cross and horrid. So then I wondered how it would feel to be really hungry, and not to be sure that you were going to have good bread and milk for supper; and that made me feel so glad that we were rich.”

Mamma was silent for a few minutes. She was thinking of a house to which she took some work the day before. She had passed through the dining-room, and there, at the carved table, sat a little girl with her supper before her,—delicate rolls, and cold chicken, and raspberry jam, and hot cocoa in a china cup all covered with roses, and creamy milk in a great silver mug.

The child was about Mabel’s age, but her face wore a very different expression. She had pushed her chair back, and was crying out that she would not eat cold chicken. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t! so there now! The nurse might just as well take it away, and she was a horrid cross old thing! Mamma was going to have partridge for dinner, and she wanted some of that, and she would have it.

Then, when the nurse shook her white-capped head and said, “No miss! your Mamma said you were to have the chicken; so now eat it, like a good girl, and you shall have some jam,” the child flew at her like a little fury, and slapped and pinched her. That was all that Mabel’s Mamma saw, but as she thought of it, and then looked at her little maiden, with a sweet face smiling over her blue pinafore, she smiled again, very tenderly, and said,—

“Yes, dear, it is a very good thing to be rich, if it is the right kind of riches. Go now, darling, and get the bread and milk; set the table, and then call Freddy in to supper.”