“Oh, what an energetic crowd!” she cried, “this hot August morning, too.  Sally, where are your men?  Neil wants to see some of them while I talk to you.”

Sally pointed off into the distance.  “Jarvis and Bob are hoeing potatoes over there in the field.  There’s a tree near by, and Neil can sit in the shade of that.  You don’t mind going, Neil?  They’re ’way behind with the potatoes.”

Neil Chase bowed impressively to the group on the porch.  “I should much prefer to stay here,” said he gallantly, “but business reasons impel me to seek that inferno out yonder.  What Jarve finds interesting in that sort of thing is beyond me.”

He drove on by the house and over the grass behind, getting as near to the corn-field as possible, that he might have to walk only the least necessary distance.  Meanwhile his wife sat down and inspected the quality of the work being done on the porch.

“Are you people sewing for an orphan asylum?” she inquired, after discovering that red and blue ginghams and white cotton cloth of a grade only moderately fine were the materials being used for certain small garments.

“Something like it.  One of Mr. Ferry’s poor families was burned out the other day—­five children and an invalid mother.”

“Of course—­the mother’s always an invalid, isn’t she?  I believe they make themselves invalids on purpose.  Well—­it makes no difference how important it is.  Those children won’t freeze in this weather, if you don’t get these things all done to-night.  And I’m in a perfectly awful difficulty.  You all have simply got to help me out.”

“What’s the matter?” Josephine asked the question calmly, being used to Dorothy Chase’s fashion of putting things.  She threaded her needle as she spoke, as if she had every intention of continuing to work for as long a period as she had planned to do.  The other girls resumed their sewing also.  The cause of their being at work at all certainly was apology sufficient for going on with it, in spite of the visitor.

“Just listen—­and nobody is to say a word till I’m through.  It’s no use raising objections—­you’re to do as I ask, if you care anything whatever about my friendship.”  She grasped the ends of the lavender-silk parasol lying on her lavender-linen lap, nodded her head violently, causing several lavender plumes to nutter agitatedly upon her lavender-straw hat, and plunged into her subject.

“I’m entertaining to-night for our new bishop—­and he’s a distant connection besides.  I made it an evening affair, because it’s so hot, and our new house opens up so beautifully.  I planned to have some informal music—­and at this last minute Herr Braun and Madame Hafsky have failed me.  It was a misunderstanding about the date.  It turns out they were engaged for to-day weeks ago by somebody very important—­they won’t give it up.  I must have music—­and everybody is out of town.  Now what I want is to have you four go back with me to luncheon, help me about the decorations and things this afternoon, and then have Miss Carew sing and Miss Ferry play for us in the evening.  Neil will come back for the men for the evening.  You know I didn’t ask you in the beginning only because I knew you didn’t want to be invited.  But now—­you must come!”