Mom Beck had gone for the doctor.
The supper was drying up in the warming-oven.

The ice-cream was melting in the freezer.

Nobody seemed to care.

There was no one to notice the pretty table with its array of flowers and cut glass and silver.
When Mom Beck came back, Lloyd ate all by herself, and then sat out on the kitchen door-step while the doctor made his visit.
She was just going mournfully off to bed with an aching lump in her throat, when her mother opened the door.
"Come tell papa good-night," she said.

"He's lots better now." She climbed up on the bed beside him, and buried her face on his shoulder to hide the tears she had been trying to keep back all evening.
"How the child has grown!" he exclaimed.