tempted Helen to arrange this little dinner party for the Hilmers.
When she had broached the matter, her words had scarcely conveyed
their type. A woman who had helped his wife out at the Red Cross
Center during the influenza epidemic could be of almost any pattern.
But immediately he had gauged her as one of his wife's own kind. Helen
and her women friends were not incompetent housewives, but their
efforts leaned rather to an escape from domestic drudgery than to a
patient yielding to its yoke. If they discussed housekeeping at all,
it was with reference to some new labor-saving device flashing across
the culinary horizon. But Mrs. Hilmer's conversation thrilled with the
pride of her gastronomic achievements without any reference to the
labor involved. She invested her estate as housekeeper for her husband
with a commendable dignity. It appeared that she took an enormous
amount of pains with the simplest dishes. It was incredible, for
instance, how much thought and care and time went into a custard which
she described at great length for Helen's benefit.

"But that takes hours and _hours_!" Helen protested.

"But it's a real custard," Hilmer put in, dryly.

Fred Starratt felt himself flushing. Hilmer's scant speech had the
double-edged quality of most short weapons. Could it be that his guest
was sneering by implication at the fare that Helen had provided? No,
that was hardly it, because Helen had provided good fare, even if she
had prepared most of it vicariously. Hilmer's covert disdain was more
impersonal, yet it remained every whit as irritating, for all that.
Perhaps a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a
finger on its precise quality. He had another taste of it later when
the inevitable strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened