Spend-the-Day Guests



There was a storm that night and next day a heavy fog dropped down like a
thick white veil over town and sea. It was so cold that Jeremy lighted a
fire, not only in the living room but in the guest chamber across the
hall.

A week earlier Tippy had announced, "It'll never do to let Cousin
Mehitable Huntingdon go back to Hyannis without having broken bread with
us. She'd talk about it to the end of her days, if we were the only
relations in town who failed to ask her in to a meal, during her
fortnight's visit. And, of course, if we ask her, all the family she's
staying with ought to be invited, and we've never had the new minister
and his wife here to eat. Might as well do it all up at once while we're
about it."

Spend-the-day guests were rare in Georgina's experience. The grand
preparations for their entertainment which went on that morning put the
new partnership and the treasure-quest far into the back-ground. She
forgot it entirely while the dining-room table, stretched to its limit,
was being set with the best china and silver as if for a Thanksgiving
feast. Mrs. Fayal, the mother of Manuel and Joseph and Rosa, came over to
help in the kitchen, and Tippy whisked around so fast that Georgina,
tagging after, was continually meeting her coming back.

Georgina was following to ask questions about the expected guests. She
liked the gruesome sound of that term "blood relations" as Tippy used it,
and wanted to know all about this recently discovered "in-law," the widow