I want my breakfast, don't you ?" "Yes," said Jessie, with a deep sigh.

"I am _very_ hungry, but-- but--your mother said we would wait till father was gone." She hesitated over the term by which she should speak of her stepmother.

Charlie noticed it.
"I wish you'd call her 'mother,'" he said gently; "it would make us seem more like brother and sister, and I would love to have a sister.
I've wished so often that I'd got one, or had got somebody to talk to, and read and play with me.

Mother would like it, too.

She isn't really cross, you know.