"If you had roasted your face and burnt your fingers as often as I have, making it for father, I guess you would know how." "Well, now, just suppose we make two slices,--one for mother, and one for father,--and two cups of tea.

My! you and I will be jolly housekeepers, Kitty." "Humph!" said Kitty contemptuously.
You see she wasn't in the least used to being good-natured, and it took a great deal of coaxing to make her give other than short, sharp answers to all that was said.

But, for all that, she went to work, after Tip had poured some water in the dingy little tea-kettle and set it over the fire, cutting the two slices of bread, and getting them ready to toast when there should be any coals.
Tip, meantime, hunted among the confusion, of all sorts of things in the cupboard, for two clean plates and cups.
"You're taken with an awful clean fit, seems to me," Kitty said, as she stood watching him while he hunted for a cloth, then carefully wiped off the plates.
"Yes," answered Tip good-naturedly; "I'm going to try it for a spell, and find out how things look after they are washed." Altogether it was a queer morning to both of them; and each felt a touch of triumph when at last the toast lay brown and nice, a slice on each plate, and the hot tea, poured into the cups, smelled fresh and fragrant.
The two children went softly to the bedroom door in time to hear their father say,-- "What makes you try to get up, if your head is so bad ?" "Oh, what makes me! What else is there for _me_ to do?
The young ones are both up, and if I find the roof left on the house I'll be thankful.

I never knew them to stay together five minutes without having a battle." At almost any other time in her life these words would have made Kitty very angry; but this morning she was intent on not letting her tea spill over on the toast, and so paid very little attention to them.
Tip marched boldly in with his dish, Kitty following.
"Lie still, mother, till you get some of our tea and toast, and I reckon it will cure you." Mrs.Lewis raised herself on one elbow, saw the beautiful brown slices, caught a whiff of the fragrant tea, then asked wonderingly,-- "Who's here ?" "Kitty and me," Tip made answer, proudly and promptly.
Something very like a smile gathered on Mrs.Lewis's worn, fretful face.
"Well, now," she said, "if I ain't beat! It's the last thing on earth I ever expected you to do." What spell had come over Tip?
Breakfast was a great success.

After it was over he found a great many things to do; the rusty old axe was hunted up, and some hard knots made to become very respectable-looking sticks of wood, which he piled in the wood-box.