It was on Sunday evening that the quartet met regularly for their seance.  Old Reinhardt, the violin teacher, was first violin and leader; Mr. Bauermeister (in everyday life a well-to-do wholesale plumber) was second violin; Professor Marshall played the viola, and old Professor Kennedy bent his fine, melancholy face over the ’cello.  Any one who chose might go to the Marshall house on Sunday evenings, on condition that he should not talk during the music, and did not expect any attention.

The music began at seven promptly and ended at ten.  A little before that time, Mrs. Marshall, followed by any one who felt like helping, went out into the kitchen and made hot coffee and sandwiches, and when the last chord had stopped vibrating, the company adjourned into the dining-room and partook of this simple fare.  During the evening no talk was allowed except the occasional wranglings of the musicians over tempo and shading, but afterwards, every one’s tongue, chastened by the long silence, was loosened into loud and cheerful loquacity.  Professor Marshall, sitting at the head of the table, talked faster and louder than any one else, throwing the ball to his especial favorite, brilliant young Professor Saunders, who tossed it back with a sureness and felicity of phrase which he had learned nowhere but in this give-and-take.  Mrs. Marshall poured the coffee, saw that every one was served with sandwiches, and occasionally when the talk, running over every known topic, grew too noisy, or the discussion too hot, cast in one of the pregnant and occasionally caustic remarks of which she held the secret.  They were never brilliant, Mrs. Marshall’s remarks—­but they were apt to have a dry humor, and almost always when she had said her brief say? there loomed out of the rainbow mist of her husband’s flashing, controversial talk the outlines of the true proportions of the case.

After the homely feast was eaten, each guest rose and carried his own cup and saucer and plate into the kitchen in a gay procession, and since it was well known that, for the most part, the Marshalls “did their own work,” several of the younger ones helped wash the dishes, while the musicians put away the music-racks and music, and the rest put on their wraps.  Then Professor Marshall stood at the door holding up a lamp while the company trooped down the long front walk to the gate in the hedge, and turned along the country road to the cross-roads where the big Interurban cars whizzed by.

All this happened with that unbroken continuity which was the characteristic of the Marshall life, most marking them as different from the other faculty families.  Week after week, and month after month, this program was followed with little variation, except for the music which was played, and the slight picturesque uncertainty as to whether old Reinhardt would or would not arrive mildly under the influence of long Sunday imbibings.  Not that this factor interfered at