“Not unless I’m chloroformed first, Major,” Susan said, briskly, and everybody laughed absently at the well-known pleasantry.  They were all accustomed to the absurdity of the Major’s question, and far more absorbed just now in watching the roast, which had just come on.  Another pot-roast.  Everybody sighed.

“This isn’t just what I meant to give you good people to-night,” said Mrs. Lancaster cheerfully, as she stood up to carve, “but butchers can be tyrants, as we all know.  Mary Lou, put vegetables on that for Mrs. Cortelyou.”

Mary Lou briskly served potatoes and creamed carrots and summer squash; Susan went down a pyramid of saucers as she emptied a large bowl of rather watery tomato-sauce.

“Well, they tell us meat isn’t good for us anyway!” piped Mrs. Kinney, who was rheumatic, and always had scrambled eggs for dinner.

“—­Elegant chicken, capon, probably, and on Sundays, turkey all winter long!” a voice went on in the pause.

“My father ate meat three times a day, all his life,” said Mrs. Parker, a dark, heavy woman, with an angelic-looking daughter of nineteen beside her, “and papa lived to be—­let me see—­”

“Ah, here’s Jinny!” Mrs. Lancaster stopped carving to receive the kiss of a tall, sweet-faced, eye-glassed young woman who came in, and took the chair next hers.  “Your soup’s cold, dear,” said she tenderly.

Miss Virginia Lancaster looked a little chilly; her eyes, always weak, were watery now from the sharp evening air, and her long nose red at the tip.  She wore neat, plain clothes, and a small hat, and laid black lisle gloves and a small black book beside her plate as she sat down.

“Good evening, everybody!” said she, pleasantly.  “Late comers mustn’t complain, Ma, dear.  I met Mrs. Curry, poor thing, coming out of the League rooms, and time flew, as time has a way of doing!  She was telling me about Harry,” Miss Virginia sighed, peppering her soup slowly.  “He knew he was going,” she resumed, “and he left all his little things—­”

“Gracious!  A child of seven?” Mrs. Parker said.

“Oh, yes!  She said there was no doubt of it.”

The conversation turned upon death, and the last acts of the dying.  Loretta Parker related the death of a young saint.  Miss Lord, pouring a little lime water into most of her food, chewed religiously, her eyes moving from one speaker’s face to another.

“I saw my pearl to-day,” said William Oliver to Susan, under cover of the general conversation.

“Eleanor Harkness?  Where?”

“On Market Street,—­the little darling!  Walking with Anna Carroll.  Going to the boat.”

“Oh, and how’s Anna?”

“Fine, I guess.  I only spoke to them for a minute.  I wish you could have seen her dear little laugh—­”

“Oh, Billy, you fatuous idiot!  It’ll be someone else to-morrow.”

“It will not,” said William, without conviction “No, my little treasure has all my heart—­”