Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they were well-educated girls, and any mother’s heart must have been proud of them.  But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied with them.  She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the days of the week.  Other days had their duties:  music, studies, riding, tennis, or walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead weight upon her.  Somehow, they were not in the current of good times that the other girls and boys of their ages were having.  If she suggested brightly that they go over to the Parmalees’ or the Morans’ and see if the young people were playing tennis, she knew that Charlotte would delicately negative the idea:  “They’ve got their sets all made up, M’ma, and one hates to, unless they specially ask one, don’t you know?” They might go, of course, and greet their friends decorously, and watch the game smilingly for a while.  Then they would come home with Fraulein, not forgetting to say good-bye to their hostess.  But, although Charlotte played a better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played a good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in dashing costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made the Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull.  They would come home and tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the boys jump her over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent Parmalee’s panama all afternoon, and called out to him, right across the court, “Come on down to the boathouse, Kent, and let’s have a smoke!”

“Poor Vivian—­poor Billy!” Mrs. Haviland would say.  “Men don’t really admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although the silly girls may think they do!  But when it comes to marrying, it is the sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!”

She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it, but, if they discussed it when they were alone together, before Mamma, they were always decorously impressed.

“Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?” she asked now, when the forced strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was trying to eat the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time carefully avoid the cake itself and the frosting.

“What’s Carol doing, M’ma?”

“When M’ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with another question, dear.  I dropped Carol at the club, but I think Aunt Rachael means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs. Whittaker’s for tea.”

“We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M’ma, and she very sweetly said that you were to—­that is, that she hoped you would bring us in for a little while this afternoon.  Didn’t she, Isabelle?”

“I don’t want to go!” Isabelle grumbled.  But her mother ignored her.

“That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude.  I think I will go over to the club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going, and then I could pick you girls up here.”