“You were an angel to do it.  Listen; do you want to read this when I’m through?”

“Well, if you think so.”

“Think so?—­Carlyle’s ‘Revolution’?  Of course you ought to!  Adele, isn’t he ignorant?”

“I read that in High School,” smiled Adele.  “It’s awfully good.”

“Mis’ Ban’ster,” Aurora was at the door, “Hainy was cuttin’ open the chickens f’ t’morrer, and she says one of ’em give an awful queer sort of Pop—!”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” Martie started kitchenward.  John Dryden gave a laugh of purest joy; Aurora was one of his delights.  “We always say we’re going to read aloud in the evenings,” she called back.  “Now here’s a chance—­a wet evening, and Adele and I with oceans of sewing!”

She went from the kitchen upstairs, finding the various boarders quietly congregating in the hall and parlour, awaiting the opening of the dining-room door.  Adele had gone up to her room, but Teddy and John were roaming about.  Rain still slashed and swished out of doors.  The winter was upon them.

“Seems to be such a smell of paint,” said the younger Miss Peet.

“Well, that’s just trying out the radiators,” Martie said hearteningly.  “It won’t last.  Did you get caught?”

“Sister did; I got home just before it started.  It seems to me we’re having rain early this year—­”

“We had had two inches at this time last year,” said old Colonel Fox.  Martie knew that this unpromising avenue would lead him immediately to Chickamauga; she slipped into the dining room and began to carve.  Aurora was rushing about with butter-plates, her cousin Lyola, engaged merely for the dinner-hour, was filling glasses.  A moment later the entire household assembled for the meal.  Mrs. Fox, a gentle, bony old lady, with clean, cool hands, and with a dowdy little yoke of good lace in the neck of her old silk, smiled about her sadly.  Mrs. Winchell was a plump little woman who always burst out laughing as a preliminary to speech.  Her daughter was eye-glassed, pretty, capable, a woman who realized perfectly, at twenty-six, that she had no charm whatever for men.  She realized, too, that Mrs. Bannister, with her bronze hair and quick speech, was full of it, and envied the younger woman in a bloodless sort of way.  Her brother, known as “Win,” had already had a definite repulse from Mrs. Bannister, and nothing was too bad for the snubbed suitor to intimate about her in consequence.  Win had never seen “this husband of hers”; Win thought she looked “a little gay, all right.”  He had a much more successful friendship with Adele, who slapped his hand and told him he was the “limit.”

To-night one of the clerks from the top floor, shaking out his napkin, called gaily to Mrs. Bannister that this was his birthday.  It was characteristic of her kindly relationship that she came immediately to his table.  Now why hadn’t he told her yesterday?  He should have had a cake, and chicken-pie, because he had once said chicken was his favourite “insect.”  He was twenty-eight?  He seemed such a boy!