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They stopped in Charlottetown and had dinner. Emily, who had had no appetite since her father’s death, could not eat the roast beef which the boarding-house waitress put before her. Whereupon Aunt Elizabeth whispered mysteriously to the waitress, who went away and presently returned with a plateful of delicate, cold chicken—fine white slices, beautifully trimmed with lettuce frills.

“Can you eat that?” said Aunt Elizabeth sternly, as to a culprit at the bar.

“I’ll—try,” whispered Emily.

She was too frightened just then to say more, but by the time she had forced down some of the chicken she had made up her small mind that a certain matter must be put right.

“Aunt Elizabeth,” she said.

“Hey, what?” said Aunt Elizabeth, directing her steel-blue eyes straight at her niece’s troubled ones.

“I would like you to understand,” said Emily, speaking very primly and precisely so that she would be sure to get things right, “that it was not because I did not like the roast beef I did not eat it. I was not hungry at all; and I just et some of the chicken to oblige you, not because I liked it any better.”