herself, and for the first time in two years had begun to spend
every evening at home. In the morning of each day she helped
Victorine with the upstairs work, making the beds, putting the
rooms to rights; or consulted with the butcher's and grocer's boys
at the head of the back stairs, or chaffered with urbane and
smiling Chinamen with their balanced vegetable baskets. She knew
the house and its management at her fingers' ends, and supervised
everything that went forward. Laurie Flagg coming to call upon
her, on Wednesday afternoon, to remonstrate upon her sudden
defection, found her in the act of tacking up a curtain across the
pantry window.

But Blix had the afternoons and evenings almost entirely to
herself. These hours, heretofore taken up with functions and the
discharge of obligations, dragged not a little during the week
that followed upon her declaration of independence. Wednesday
afternoon, however, was warm and fine, and she went to the Park
with Snooky. Without looking for it or even expecting it, Blix
came across a little Japanese tea-house, or rather a tiny Japanese
garden, set with almost toy Japanese houses and pavilions, where
tea was served and thin sweetish wafers for five cents. Blix and
Snooky went in. There was nobody about but the Japanese serving
woman. Snooky was in raptures, and Blix spent a delightful half-
hour there, drinking Japanese tea, and feeding the wafers to the
carp and gold-fish in the tiny pond immediately below where she
sat. A Chinaman, evidently of the merchant class, came in, with a
Chinese woman following. As he took his place and the Japanese
girl came up to get his order, Blix overheard him say in English:
"Bring tea for-um leddy."