“What are we doing this afternoon?” asked the unconscious delinquent languidly.  “Autograph quilts?  I’ve got a lot of blocks for you—­friends of mine in the city.”  She began to fumble in the pretty workbag she carried.  “Gracious, I was sure I had them with me!  Isn’t that odd?  I can’t find them.”

“Let me look,” suggested Miss Jessie Sinclair kindly.

But the other snatched back the open bag with a gesture which was almost rude.

“Oh, no—­they are not there!  I can’t imagine what I have done with them.”  She looked up in a bewildered way.  Indeed the perturbation was so out of proportion to the size of the calamity that the ladies questioned each other with their eyes.

The President tapped with her thimble upon the quilting frame and every one became very busy.  “I hope,” she said, taking the conversation into her own hands for safe keeping, “that you found all well upon your return, Mrs. Coombe?  I hardly ever seem to see Esther now.  Did you know that we have been talking of changing our meeting to Saturday afternoon so that Esther and some more of our younger folk may join us?  We thought that it would be so nice for them—­and for us too,” she finished graciously.

Mrs. Coombe looked surprised.  “I can hardly see Esther at a Ladies’ Aid Meeting,” she said.  “Did she tell you she would come?”

“No.  We have not yet told any one of the proposed change.  But we all felt—­”

“We all felt,” interrupted Miss Sinclair, who was fairly sniffing the air with the spirit of glorious war, “that the less time our young girls have to go off philandering with young fools whom no one knows anything about, the better it will be for everybody concerned!”

Mary looked up with an air of pleased surprise.

“Has Esther been philandering?” she asked eagerly.

The President frowned.  This was hardly according to Hoyle.

“I really think,” began Miss Jessie Sinclair indignantly, “that Esther ought to be allowed to tell her mother—­”

“Gracious!  Esther never tells me anything.  And I’m dying to know.  Who is the ’young fool’?—­do tell me, somebody.”

Strangely enough, now that the way was open, no one seemed to have anything to say.

“You’ve simply got to tell me now,” urged Mary delightedly.  “Unless it’s only a silly bit of gossip.”

This fillip had the desired effect.  Everybody began to talk at once and in five minutes Esther’s step-mother knew all about the new doctor and the broken motor.  When they paused for breath, she laughed softly.

“It’s the most amusing thing I’ve heard in ages.  Fancy—­Esther!  Oh, it’s delicious.”  She looked around the circle of surprised and disappointed faces and laughed again.  “Oh, don’t pretend!  You know very well that you’re not a bit shocked, really.  And surely you don’t think that I ought to scold Esther?  Why,” with a little flare of her old-time loyalty, “Esther is worth a dozen ordinary girls.  I’d trust Esther with Apollo on a desert island.  But I’ll admit I’m rather anxious to see the young man.  He must be rather nice if Esther agreed to show him around.  As for the accident,” she shrugged her shoulders, “I know enough about motors to know that that might happen any time.”