Mrs. Edwards never allowed any one to answer a question when she could do it herself.  “It’s a parsnip stew,” said she, sharply.  “Elmira dug some up in the old garden-patch, where we thought they were dead.  I put in a piece of pork, when I’d ought to have saved it.  It’s good ’nough for anybody, I don’t care who ’tis, if it’s Doctor Prescott, or Squire Merritt, or the minister.  You’d better be thankful for it, both of you.”

“Where’s father?” said Jerome.

“He ‘ain’t come home yet.  I dun’no’ where he is.  He’s been gone long enough to draw ten cords of wood.  I s’pose he’s potterin’ round somewheres—­stopped to talk to somebody, or something.  I ain’t going to wait any longer.  He’ll have to eat his dinner cold if he can’t get home.”

Elmira put the dish of stew on the table.  Jerome drew his chair up.  Mrs. Edwards grasped the long-handled dipper preparatory to distributing the savory mess, then suddenly stopped and turned to Elmira.

“Elmira,” said she, “you go into the parlor an’ git the china bowl with pink flowers on it, an’ then you go to the chest in the spare bedroom an’ get out one of them fine linen towels.”

“What for?” said Elmira, wonderingly.

“No matter what for.  You do what I tell you to.”

Elmira went out, and after a little reappeared with the china bowl and the linen towel.  Jerome sat waiting, with a kind of fierce resignation.  He was almost starved, and the smell of the stew in his nostrils made him fairly ravenous.

“Give it here,” said Mrs. Edwards, and Elmira set the bowl before her mother.  It was large, almost large enough for a punch-bowl, and had probably been used for one.  It was a stately old dish from overseas, a relic from Mrs. Edwards’s mother, who had seen her palmy days before her marriage.  Mrs. Edwards had also in her parlor cupboard a part of a set of blue Indian china which had belonged to her mother.  The children watched while their mother dipped the parsnip stew into the china bowl.  Elmira, while constantly more amenable to her mother, was at the moment more outspoken against her.

“There won’t be enough left for us,” she burst forth, excitedly.

“I guess you’ll get all you need; you needn’t worry.”

“There won’t be enough for father when he comes home, anyhow.”

“I ain’t a mite worried about your father; I guess he won’t starve.”

Mrs. Edwards went on dipping the stew into the bowl while the children watched.  She filled it nearly two-thirds full, then stopped, and eyed the girl and boy critically.  “I guess you’d better go, Elmira,” said she.  “Jerome can’t unless he’s all cleaned up.  Get my little red cashmere shawl, and you can wear my green silk pumpkin hood.  Yours don’t look nice enough to go there with.”

“Can’t I eat dinner first, mother?” pleaded Elmira, pitifully.

“No, you can’t.  I guess you won’t starve if you wait a little while.  I ain’t ‘goin’ to send stew to folks stone-cold.  Hurry right along and get the shawl and hood.  Don’t stand there lookin’ at me.”