Judith’s curly head drooped over her hated work; she was so ashamed of behaving “ugly”; she hoped she had not behaved quite as ugly as she felt.
The ball was the required size at last, and she joyfully took it up in the garret to the barrel that was only half filled.
Then, aimlessly, she wandered into the kitchen, and there, odorously, temptingly, under a clean, coarse towel, were the two loaves of warm graham bread; she thought she cared for nothing in the way of bread, cake, or pudding as much as she cared for fresh graham bread and butter.
And Aunt Rody never _would_ put it on the table fresh. For a slice of this she must wait until tomorrow night.
Lifting the coarse towel she peeped, then she touched; another touch brought a crumb, such a delicious crumb; another, and another, and another delicious crumb, and the crust of one end of a loaf was all picked off.
“Oh, deary _me_!” cried Judith, in dismay.
Then she covered it carefully, standing spellbound.
Afraid to go away and leave the bread that would tell its own story, afraid to stay with it, for Aunt Rody’s sunbonnet and heavy step might appear at any moment, she went to the sink to pump water over her hands and to decide what to do next.
Joe was on his way to the barn and stables to gather eggs; Aunt Rody had made a law that she should not go into any of the outbuildings without permission,—without _her_ permission; in summer time there were “so many machines and things around, and children had a way of stepping into the jaws of death.” She missed hunting the eggs.
The gate swung to, there was a step on the flagged path; with her hands dripping, she flew up the kitchen stairs; on the landing she waited, breathless, to hear what Aunt Rody would say.
The step was in the kitchen, there was a pause,—Aunt Rody must be uncovering the bread; a smothered exclamation, then a quick, angry voice: “_That_ Joe! He’s always doing something underhanded. He’s too fond of eating; I will not say one word, but he shall not have any of _this_ graham bread, or the next, if I can help it. When he asks for it I’ll tell him before all the table-full that he _knows why_.”
The awful sentence was delivered in an awful voice; tearful and trembling, the culprit up the stairway heard every word; it was her dreadful secret, her guilty secret; she no more dared to rush down the stairs and confess the theft than she dared—she could not think of any comparison.