“Well, what did you have to see her for, Mama?” Ella would irritably demand, when her autocratic “Who’d you see to-day?  What’d you do?” had drawn from her mother the name of some caller.

“Why, dearie, I happened to be right there.  I was just crossing the porch when they drove up!” Mrs. Saunders would timidly submit.

“Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord!  Mama, you make me crazy!” Ella would drop her hands, fling her head back, gaze despairingly at her mother.  “That was your chance to snub her, Mama!  Why didn’t you have Chow Yew say that you were out?”

“But, dearie, she seemed a real sweet little thing!”

“Sweet little—!  You’ll have me crazy!  Sweet little nothing—­just because she married Gordon Jones, and the St. Johns have taken her up, she thinks she can get into society!  And anyway, I wouldn’t have given Rosie St. John the satisfaction for a thousand dollars!  Did you ask her to your bridge lunch?”

“Ella, dear, it is my lunch,” her mother might remind her, with dignity.

“Mama, did you ask that woman here to play cards?”

“Well, dearie, she happened to say—­”

“Oh, happened to say—!” A sudden calm would fall upon Miss Ella, the calm of desperate decision.  The subject would be dropped for the time, but she would bring a written note to the lunch table.

“Listen to this, Mama; I can change it if you don’t like it,” Ella would begin, kindly, and proceed to read it.

High gardens.  My dear Mrs. Jones: 

Mother has asked me to write you that her little bridge lunch
for Friday, the third, must be given up because of the dangerous
illness of a close personal friend.  She hopes that it is only a
pleasure deferred, and will write you herself when less anxious
and depressed.  Cordially yours,

Ella Cornwallis Saunders.

“But, Ella, dear,” the mother would protest, “there are others coming—­”

“Leave the others to me!  I’ll telephone and make it the day before.”  Ella would seal and dispatch the note, and be inclined to feel generously tender and considerate of her mother for the rest of the day.

Ella was at home for a few moments, almost every day; but she did not dine at home more than once or twice in a fortnight.  But she was always there for the family’s occasional formal dinner party in which events Susan refused very sensibly to take part.  She and Miss Baker dined early and most harmoniously in the breakfast-room, and were free to make themselves useful to the ladies of the house afterward.  Ella would be magnificent in spangled cloth-of-gold; Emily very piquante in demure and drooping white, embroidered exquisitely with tiny French blossoms in color; Mrs. Saunders rustling in black lace and lavender silk, as the three went downstairs at eight o’clock.  Across the wide hall below would stream the hooded women and the men in great-coats, silk hats in hand.  Ella did not leave the drawing-room to meet them, as on less formal occasions, but a great chattering and laughing would break out as they went in.