noon
After breakfast she spent two hours in the kitchen with patient Nancy , spatting out little ginger cakes , and picking dirt from the cracks of the floor with a pin . Then she danced off to the sitting-room to play with the baby , telling him `` if he 'd be goody , he 'd grow up a doctor , like my papa . '' She had promised the same thing to every boy baby at Laurel Grove , for doctors were the best people in the world , she thought , and best of all was Dr. Papa . She was as happy as ever , and singing merrily in the front yard , when the boys came home at noon . The moment she saw them she felt perfectly forlorn , and it suddenly seemed to her as if she could n't live any longer without Milly . That was n't the worst of it ; she _ knew _ she could n't live any longer without her mother . It was a terrible feeling that swept all at once over little Flaxie .