The feast, as might have been expected at Grandma Maynard’s, was delicious, but the Maynard children could not enjoy it very much because of their environment.  They were not together, and each one being with several strangers, felt it necessary to make polite conversation.

King tried to talk on some interesting subject to the little girl who sat next him.

“Have you a flower garden?” he said.

“Oh, no, indeed; we live in the city, so we can’t very well have a flower garden.”

“No, of course not,” agreed King.  “You see, we live in the country, so we have lots of flowers.”

“It must be dreadful to live in the country,” commented the little girl, with a look of scorn.

“It isn’t dreadful at all,” returned King; “and just now, in springtime, it’s lovely.  The flowers are all coming out, and the birds are hopping around, and the grass is getting green.  What makes you say it’s dreadful?”

“Oh, I don’t like the country,” said the child, with a shrug of her little shoulders.  “The grass is wet, and there aren’t any pavements, and everything is so disagreeable.”

“You’re thinking of a farm; I don’t mean that kind of country,” and then King remembered that he ought not to argue the question, but agree with the little lady, so he said, “But of course if you don’t like the country, why you don’t, that’s all”

“Yes, that’s all,” said the little girl, and then the conversation languished, for the children seemed to have no subjects in common.

At her table, Marjorie was having an equally difficult time.  There was a good-looking and pleasant-faced boy sitting next to her, so she said, “Do you have a club?”

“Oh, no,” returned the boy; “my father belongs to clubs, but I’m too young.”

“But I don’t mean that kind,” explained Marjorie; “I mean a club just for fun.  We have a Jinks Club,—­we cut up jinks, you know.”

“How curious!” said the boy.  “What are jinks?”

Marjorie thought the boy rather silly not to know what jinks were, for she thought any one with common sense ought to know that, but she said, “Why, jinks are capers,—­mischief,—­any kind of cutting up.”

“And you have a club for that?” exclaimed the boy, politely surprised.

“Yes, we do,” said Marjorie, determined to stand up for her own club.  “And we have lovely times.  We do cut up jinks, but we try to make them good jinks, and we play all over the house, and out of doors, and everywhere.”

“It must be great fun,” said the boy, but he said it in such an uninterested tone that Marjorie gave up talking to him, and turned her attention to the neighbor on her other side.

When the supper was over, the young guests all took their leave.  Again the Maynards stood in a group to receive the good-byes, and every child expressed thanks for the afternoon’s pleasure in a formal phrase, and curtsied, and went away.