“Poor Margaret, she must feel so very bad that nothing can reconcile her to such a betrayal of her hospitality,” she reflected as she flitted across the street.  There was nobody in evidence at her house at window or on the wide verandah.  Annie looked at her watch tucked in her girdle, hung around her neck by a thin gold chain which had belonged to her mother.  It yet wanted a full hour of supper time.  She had time to call on Alice Mendon and go to the post-office.  Alice lived on the way to the post-office, in a beautiful old colonial house.  Annie ran along the shady sidewalk and soon had a glimpse of Alice’s pink draperies on her great front porch.  Annie ran down the deep front yard between the tall box bushes, beyond which bloomed in a riot of colour and perfume roses and lilies and spraying heliotrope and pinks and the rest of their floral tribe all returned to their dance of summer.  Alice’s imposing colonial porch was guarded on either side of the superb circling steps by a stone lion from over seas.  On the porch was a little table and several chairs.  Alice sat in one reading.  She was radiant in her pink muslin.  Alice seldom wore white.  She was quite sensible as to the best combinations of herself with colours although she had, properly speaking, no vanity.  She arranged herself to the best advantage as she arranged a flower in a vase.  On the heavily carved mahogany table beside her was a blue and white India bowl filled with white roses and heliotrope and lemon verbena.  Annie inhaled the bouquet of perfume happily as she came up the steps with Alice smiling a welcome at her.  Annie had worshipped more fervently at Margaret Edes’ shrine than at Alice’s and yet she had a feeling of fuller confidence in Alice.  She was about to tell Alice about her book, not because Alice needed the comfort of her joy but because she herself, although unknowingly, needed Alice’s ready sympathy of which she had no doubt.  Her interview with Margaret had left the child hurt and bewildered and now she came to Alice.  Alice did not rise and kiss her.  Alice seldom kissed anybody but she radiated kindly welcome.

“Sit down, little Annie,” she said, “I am glad you have come.  My aunt and cousin have gone to New York and I have been alone all day.  We would have tea and cake but I know the hour of your Medes and Persians’ supper approaches instead of my later dinner.”

“Yes,” said Annie, sitting down, “and if I were to take tea and cake now, Alice, I could eat nothing and grandmother and my aunts are very particular about my clearing my plate.”

Alice laughed, but she looked rather solicitously at the girl.  “I know,” she said, then she hesitated.  She pitied little Annie Eustace and considered her rather a victim of loving but mistaken tyranny.  “I wish,” she said, “that you would stay and dine with me to-night.”

Annie fairly gasped.  “They expect me at home,” she replied.

“I know, and I suppose if I were to send over and tell them you would dine with me, it would not answer.”