On the day of the next meeting the ladies of the Club gathered in the dingy and inelegant drawing-room of Miss Caroline.  No vividly flowered carpet decked the floor; only a time-toned rug that left the outer edge of the floor untidily exposing its dull stain; no gilt and onyx table bore its sculptured fantasy by the busy Rogers.  The mantel and shelves were bare of those fixed ornaments that should decorate the waste places of all true homes; there were no flint arrow-heads, no “specimens,” no varnished pine cones, no “Rock of Ages,” no waxen lilies, not even a china cup goldenly emblazoned with “Love the Giver,” in German script.  And there were no beautiful chairs with delicate gilded spindles—­not an elegant and impracticable chair in the whole big room—­not one chair which could not be occupied as comfortably as any common kitchen rocker.  It was indeed a poor place; obviously the woman’s best room, yet showing careless traces of almost daily use.  To ladies who never opened their best rooms save to dust and air them on days when company was expected, and who would as soon have lounged in them informally as they would have desecrated a church, this laxity was heinous.

And ordinarily, in the best rooms of one another, the ladies became spontaneously, rigidly formal as they assembled, speaking in tones suitably stiff of the day’s paper, or viewing with hushed esteem those art treasures that surrounded them.

But so difficult was it to attain this formality amid the homely surroundings of Miss Caroline that to-day they not only lounged with negligent ease in the big chairs and on the poor, broad sofas, but they talked familiarly of their household concerns quite as if they had been in one of their own second-best rooms on any common day.

On a table in one cool corner was a huge bowl of thin silver, whence issued a baffling fragrance.  Discreet observation, as the throng gathered, revealed this to contain a large block of ice and a colored liquid in which floated cherries with slices of lemon and orange.  A ladle of generous lines reposed in the bowl, and circling it on the table were many small cups.

There was a feeling of relief when these details had been ascertained.  Fear had been felt that Miss Caroline might forget herself and offer them a glass of wine, or something worse, from a large black bottle; for Little Arcady believed, in its innocent remoteness, that the devil’s stuff came in no other way than large black bottles.  Miss Eubanks had made sure that the ladies wore their white ribbons.  Marcella’s own satin bow was larger than common, so that no one might mistake the principles of the heart beating beneath it.

But the cool big bowl with its harmless fruit restored confidence at once, and when Miss Caroline urged them to try Clem’s punch they refrained not.  The walk to the north end of town on a sultry afternoon had qualified them to receive its consolations, and they gathered gratefully about.