* * * * *

Then she emerged again, her husband beside her, carrying the largest of the baskets, the children struggling with other baskets, a pail, an ice-cream-freezer, while the dog wove circles about them, wrought to exaltation by the complicated smell of the eatables.

“Neale was just coming in the front gate,” she explained, as he nodded familiarly to the men and bent to kiss the old woman’s cheek.  “Cousin Hetty, just look at Elly in that night-cap of Great-aunt Pauline’s.  Doesn’t she look the image of that old daguerreotype of Grandmother?  See here, Mark, who said you could trail that sword out here?  That belongs in the attic.”

“Oh, let him, let him,” said Cousin Hetty peaceably.

“There’s nothing much less breakable than a sword.  He can’t hurt it.”

“I’ve woren it lots of times before,” said Mark.  “Aunt Hetty always let me to.  Favver, won’t you ’trap it tight to me, so’s I won’t ’traddle it so much.”

“Mother,” said Elly, coming up close to Marise, as she stood unpacking the dishes, “I was looking inside that old diary, the one in the red leather cover, your grandmother’s, I guess, the diary she wrote when she was a young lady.  And she was having a perfectly dreadful time whether she could believe the Doctrine of the Trinity.  She seemed to feel so bad about it.  She wrote how she couldn’t sleep nights, and cried, and everything.  It was the Holy Ghost she couldn’t make any sense out of.  Mother, what in the world is the Doctrine of the Trinity?

“For mercy’s sakes!” cried Cousin Hetty.  “I never saw such a family!  Elly, what won’t you be up to, next?  I can’t call that a proper thing for a little girl to talk about, right out, so.”

“Mother, you tell me,” said Elly, looking up into her mother’s face with the expression of tranquil trust which was like a visible radiance.  Marise always felt scared, she told herself, when Elly looked at her like that.  She made a little helpless shrugged gesture of surrender with her shoulders, setting down on the table a plate of cold sliced lamb.  “Elly, darling, I can’t stop just this minute to tell you about it, and anyhow I don’t understand any more about it than Grandmother did.  But I don’t care if I don’t.  The first quiet minute we have together, I’ll tell you enough so you can understand why she cared.”

“All right, when I go to bed tonight I’ll remind you to,” Elly made the engagement definite.  She added, with a shout, “Oh, Mother, chicken sandwiches!  Oh, I didn’t know we were going to have chicken sandwiches.  Mother, can’t we begin now?  I’m awfully hungry.”

“Hello,” said Neale, looking back toward the house.  “Here comes Eugenia, arisen from her nap.  Paul, run back into the house and bring out another chair.  Marise, have you explained who Eugenia is?”

“Oh la, la, no!” exclaimed Marise.  “I forgot they didn’t know her.  Quick, you do it, Neale.”