“No Lizzie?” asked Mamma, blithely, when her first greetings were over, and the case of Cousin Will had been dismissed with a few emphatic sentences.

“I let her go this afternoon instead of to-morrow, Muddie, dear.  We’re going down town to dinner.”

“Oh; that’s nice,—­but I look a perfect fright!” said Mrs. Honeywell, following Mary upstairs.  “Nasty trip!  I don’t want a thing but a cup of tea for supper anyway—­bit of toast.  I’ll be glad to get my things off for a while.”

“If you like, Mamma, why don’t you just turn in?” Mary suggested.  “It’s nearly four now.  I’ll bring you up some cold meat and tea and so on.”

“Sounds awfully nice,” her mother said, getting a thin little silk wrapper out of her suit-case.  “But we’ll see,—­there’s no hurry.  What time are you meeting Georgie?”

“Well, we were going to Macbeth’s,—­but that’s not important,—­we needn’t meet him until nearly seven, I suppose,” Mary said patiently, “only I ought to telephone him what we are going to do.”

“Oh, telephone that I’ll come too, I’ll feel fine in half an hour,” Mrs. Honeywell said decidedly.

Mary, unsatisfied with this message, temporized by sitting down in a deep chair.  The room, which had all been made ready for Mamma, was cool and pleasant.  Awnings shaded the open windows; the rugs, the wall-paper, the chintzes were all in gay and roseate tints.  Mrs. Honeywell stretched herself luxuriously on the bed, both pillows under her head.

“I’m sure she’d be much more comfortable here than tearing about town this stuffy night!” the daughter reflected, while listening to an account of Cousin Will’s dreadful house, and dreadful children.

It was so easy when Mamma was away to think generously, affectionately of her, to laugh kindly at the memory of her trying moods.  But it was very different to have Mamma actually about, to humor her whims, listen to her ceaseless chatter, silently sacrifice to her comfort a thousand comforts of one’s own.

After a half hour of playing listener she went down to telephone George.

“Oh, damn!” said George, heartily.  “And here I’ve been hustling through things thinking any minute that you’d come in.  Well, this spoils it all.  I’ll come home.”

“Oh, dearest,—­it’ll be just a ‘pick-up’ dinner, then.  I don’t know what’s in the house.  Lizzie’s gone,” Mary submitted hesitatingly.

“Oh, damn!” George said forcibly, again.

“What does your mother propose to do?” he asked Mary some hours later, when the rather unsuccessful dinner was over, Mamma had retired, and he and his wife were in their own rooms.  Mary felt impending unpleasantness in his tone, and battled with a rising sense of antagonism.  She tucked her pink hat into its flowered box, folded the silky tissue paper about it, tied the strings.

“Why, I don’t know, dear!” she said pleasantly, carrying the box to her wardrobe.