"That is what we have come to arrange for, Mrs. Bobster," said Ruth.
"I dunno. Most all I can comferbly bake three times a week, is bespoke," said the little old woman who lived in a shoe. "How many is there in your fam'bly, Miss?"
When she heard that there were just four of them--these girls alone--and that they were to live by themselves in a tent, she grew greatly interested.
"Surely I'll bake for you--and cookies, too. Maybe a fruit pie oncet in a while--'specially if you'll go over beyond the bend when berries is ripe and pick 'em yourself. And you gals a-livin' all alone? Sho! I'd think you'd be scaret to death."
"After dark," said the old woman, shaking her hand.
"Who would hurt us?" asked the Corner House girl in wonder.
"Can't most always sometimes tell," said the old woman, shaking her head.
"No," she said, quickly. "Not after dark. I ain't never alone. Oh, no!"
She spoke as though she were afraid Ruth might not believe her, and repeated the denial several times.
Tess and Dot were very anxious to go upstairs and see the rooms in the "shoe," and they made the request to Ruth in an audible whisper.
"For sure!" cried Mrs. Bobster. "All the children that come here want to go upstairs. If I had 'em of my own, that's where I'd put 'em all to bed after I'd fed 'em bread and 'whipped 'em all soundly,'" and she laughed.
"I don't believe you'd have whipped the children, if you'd been the really truly little old woman that lived in the shoe," quoth Dot, putting a confiding hand into the apple-faced lady's hard palm.
"I bet _you_ wouldn't have had to be whipped," laughed Mrs. Bobster, leading Dot away, with Tess following.
Later the hostess of the shoe-house brought out a pitcher of milk and glasses with a heaping plate of ginger cookies--the old-fashioned kind that just _melt_ on your tongue!
"Sho!" she said, when Ruth praised them. "It's easy enough to make good merlasses cookies. But ye don't wanter have no conscience when it comes to butter--no, indeed!"
Agamemnon came to the feast. In his ridiculous red flannel suit he waddled up to his mistress and pecked crumbs off her lap when she sat down on the bench in the arbor.
"He looks just like a person ready to go in swimming," chuckled Agnes. "It's a red bathing suit."