Mrs. Carew went on her way comforted.  Celia was not a fancy cook, she reflected, passing through the darkened dining-room, where the long table had been already set with a shining cloth, and where silver and glass gleamed in the darkness, but Celia was reliable.  And for a woman with three children, a large house, and but one other maid, Celia was a treasure.

She telephoned the grocer, her eyes roving critically over the hall as she did so.  The buttercups, in a great bowl on the table, were already dropping their varnished yellow leaves; Annie must brush those up the very last thing.

“So far, so good!” said Mrs. Carew, straightening the rug at the door with a small heel and dropping wearily into a porch rocker.  “There must be one thousand things I ought to be doing,” she said, resting her head and shutting her eyes.

It was a warm, delicious afternoon.  The little California town lay asleep under a haze of golden sunshine.  The Carews’ pretty house, with its lawn and garden, was almost the last on River Street, and stood on the slope of a hill that commanded all Santa Paloma Valley.  Below it, the wide tree-shaded street descended between other unfenced lawns and other handsome homes.

This was the aristocratic part of the town.  The Willard Whites’ immense colonial mansion was here; and the Whites, rich, handsome, childless, clever, and nearing the forties, were quite the most prominent people of Santa Paloma.  The Wayne Adamses, charming, extravagant young people, lived near; and the Parker Lloyds, who were suspected of hiding rather serious money troubles under their reckless hospitality and unfailing gaiety, were just across the street.  On River Street, too, lived dignified, aristocratic old Mrs. Apostleman and nervous, timid Anne Pratt and her brother Walter, whose gloomy, stately old mansion was one of the finest in town.  Up at the end of the street were the Carews, and the shabby comfortable home of Dr. and Mrs. Brown, and the neglected white cottage where Barry Valentine and his little son Billy and a studious young Japanese servant led a rather shiftless existence.  And although there were other pretty streets in town, and other pleasant well-to-do women who were members of church and club, River Street was unquestionably the street, and its residents unquestionably the people of Santa Paloma.

Beyond these homes lay the business part of the town, the railway station, and post-office, the library, and the women’s clubhouse, with its red geraniums, red-tiled roof, and plaster arches.

And beyond again were blocks of business buildings, handsome and modern, with metal-sheathed elevators, and tiled vestibules, and heavy, plate-glass windows on the street.  There was a drug store quite modern enough to be facing upon Forty-second Street and Broadway, instead of the tree-shaded peace of Santa Paloma’s main street.  At its cool and glittering fountain indeed, a hundred drinks could be mixed of which Broadway