Yet it was on one of these occasions that Mrs. Salisbury first had
what she felt was good reason to criticize Justine. During a brief
absence from home of both boys, their mother planned a rather formal
dinner. Four of her closest friends, two couples, were asked, and
Owen Sargent was invited by Sandy to make the group an even eight.
This was as many as the family table accommodated comfortably, and
seemed quite an event. Ordinarily the mistress of the house would
have been fussing for some days beforehand, in her anxiety to have
everything go well, but now, with Justine's brain and Justine's
hands in command of the kitchen end of affairs, she went to the
other extreme, and did not give her own and Sandy's share of the
preparations a thought until the actual day of the dinner.

For, as was stipulated in her bond, except for a general cleaning
once a week, the Treasure did no work downstairs outside of the
dining-room and kitchen, and made no beds at any time. This meant
that the daughter of the house must spend at least an hour every
morning in bed-making, and perhaps another fifteen minutes in that
mysteriously absorbing business known as "straightening" the living
room. Usually Sandy was very faithful to these duties; more, she
whisked through them cheerfully, in her enthusiastic eagerness that
the new domestic experiment should prove a success.

But for a morning or two before this particular dinner she had
shirked her work. Perhaps the novelty of it was wearing off a
little. There was a tennis tournament in progress at the Burning
Woods Country Club, two miles away from River Falls, and Sandy, who
was rather proud of her membership in this very smart organization,
did not want to miss a moment of it. Breakfast was barely over