"Hello, Auntie!" Susan said, laying an arm about the portly figure,
and giving the lady a kiss. Mrs. Lancaster's anxious eye went to her
oldest daughter.

"Who's Georgie talking to?" she asked, in a low tone.

"I don't know, Ma," Mary Lou said, sympathetically, pushing a chair
against the table with her knee, "Fred Persons, most likely."

"No. 'Tisn't Fred. She just spoke about Fred," said the mother
uneasily. "This is the man that didn't meet them Sunday. Sometimes,"
she complained, "it don't seem like Georgie has any dignity at all!"
She had moved to the china closet at one end of the room, and now
stood staring at it. "What did I come here for?" she asked,
helplessly.

"Glasses," prompted Susan, taking some down herself.

"Glasses," Mrs. Lancaster echoed, in relief. "Get the butter, Mary
Lou?"

"In the kitchen, Ma." Miss Lancaster went into the kitchen herself,
and Susan went on with the table-setting. Before she had finished, a
boarder or two, against the unwritten law of the house, had come
downstairs. Mrs. Cortelyou, a thin little wisp of a widow, was in
the rocker in the bay-window, Major Kinney, fifty, gray, dried-up,
was on the horsehair sofa, watching the kitchen door over his paper.
Georgia, having finished her telephoning, had come in to drop idly
into her own chair, and play with her knives and forks. Miss Lydia