Mrs. Maxwell greeted her friends at the door with a dignified bustle, showed them into her bedroom to lay aside their bonnets; then she introduced them to Mrs. Field and Lois in the parlor.

“There!” said she; “now I’ve got to let you entertain each other a few minutes.  I’ve got something to see to.  Flora she’s stepped out, an’ I guess she’s forgot how late ’tis.”

After Mrs. Maxwell had left the room, the guests sat around with a kind of solemn primness as if they were in meeting; they seemed almost hostile.  The elder of the new-comers took out her knitting, and fell to work.  She was a tall, pale, severely wrinkled woman, and a ruffled trimming on her dress gave her high shoulders a curiously girlish air.  Finally the woman who had come with her asked pantingly how Mrs. Field liked Elliot, and if she thought it changed much.  The color flashed over her little face, with its softly scalloping profile, as she spoke.  Her hair was crimped in even waves.  She wore nice white ruching in her neck and sleeves, and flat satin folds crossed each other exactly over her flat chest.  Her nervous self-consciousness did not ruffle her fine order, and she did not smile as she spoke.

“I like it pretty well,” replied Mrs. Field.  “I dunno as I can tell whether it’s changed much or not.”  She knitted fast.

“The meetin’-house has been made over since you was here,” volunteered the elder woman.  She did not look up from her knitting.

Presently Lois, at the window, saw Mr. Tuxbury’s sister, Mrs. Lowe, coming, and the minister’s wife, hurrying with a voluminous swing of her skirts, in her wake.  The minister’s wife had been calling, but Mrs. Lowe, who was a little deaf, had not heard her, and it was not until she shut the iron gate almost in her face that she saw her.  Then the two came up the walk together.  Lois watched them.  The coming of all these people was to her like the closing in of a crowd of witnesses, and for her guilt instead of her mother’s.  The minister’s wife looked up and nodded graciously to her, setting the bunch of red and white cherries on her bonnet trembling.  Lois inclined her pale young face soberly in response.

“That girl looks sick,” said the minister’s wife to Mrs. Lowe.

There was no more silence and primness after the minister’s wife entered.  Her florid face beamed on them all with masterly smiles.  She put the glasses fastened to her high satin bosom with a gold chain to her eyes, and began sewing on a white apron.  “I meant to have come before,” said she, “and brought my sewing and had a real sociable time, but one thing after another has delayed me; and I don’t know when Mr. Wheeler will get here; I left him with a caller.  But we have been delayed very pleasantly in one respect;” she looked smilingly and significantly at Mrs. Maxwell.

All the other ladies stared.  Mrs. Maxwell, standing in their midst, with a large cambric apron over her dress, and a powder of flour on one cheek, looked wonderingly back at the minister’s wife.