"If you have time, I wish you would," Mrs. Carew said, touching the
frosted top of an angel-cake with a tentative finger. "I may have to
play to-night, Celia," she went on, to her own cook, "but you girls
can manage everything, can't you? Dinner really doesn't matter--
scrambled eggs and baked potatoes, something like that, and you'll
have to serve it on the side porch."

"Oh, yes'm, we'll manage!" Celia assured her confidently. "We'll
clear up here pretty soon, and then there's nothing but the
sandwiches to do."

Mrs. Carew went on her way comforted. Celia was not a fancy cook,
she reflected, passing through the darkened dining-room, where the
long table had been already set with a shining cloth, and where
silver and glass gleamed in the darkness, but Celia was reliable.
And for a woman with three children, a large house, and but one
other maid, Celia was a treasure.

She telephoned the grocer, her eyes roving critically over the hall
as she did so. The buttercups, in a great bowl on the table, were
already dropping their varnished yellow leaves; Annie must brush
those up the very last thing.

"So far, so good!" said Mrs. Carew, straightening the rug at the
door with a small heel and dropping wearily into a porch rocker.
"There must be one thousand things I ought to be doing," she said,
resting her head and shutting her eyes.

It was a warm, delicious afternoon. The little California town lay