or field-lilies), for the local
florist's flowers, which set the ladies screaming at the moment and
talking of it till the next lunch. This would follow perhaps the next
day, or the next but one, according as a new cottager's claims
insisted or a lady had a change of guests, or three days at the
latest, for no reason.

In their rapid succession people scarcely noticed that Lindora had not
given a lunch, and she had so far abandoned herself to the enjoyment
of the others' lunches that she had half forgotten her high purposes
of reform, when she was sharply recalled to them by a lunch which had
not at all agreed with her; she had, in fact, had to have the doctor,
and many people had asked one another whether they had heard how she
was. Then she took her good resolution in both hands and gave an
afternoon, asking people by note or 'phone simply whether they would
not come in at four sharp. People were a good deal mystified, but for
this very reason everybody came. Some of them came from somebody's
lunch, which had been so nice that they lingered over it till four,
and then walked, partly to fill in the time and partly to walk off the
lunch, as there would be sure to be something at Lindora's later on.

It would be invidious to say what the nature of Lindora's
entertainment was. It was certainly to the last degree original, and
those who said the worst of it could say no worse than that it was
queer. It quite filled the time till six o'clock, and may be perhaps
best described as a negative rather than a positive triumph, though
what Lindora had aimed at she had undoubtedly achieved. Whatever it
was, whether original or queer, it was certainly novel.

A good many men had come, one at least to every five ladies, but as
the time passed and a certain blankness began to gather over the
spirits of all, they fell into different attitudes of the despair
which the ladies did their best to pass off for rapture. At each
unscheduled noise they started in a vain expectation, and when the end
came, it came so without accent, so without anything but the clock to
mark it as the close, that they could hardly get themselves together
for going away. They did what was nice and right, of course, in
thanking Lindora for her fascinating afternoon, but when they were
well beyond hearing one said to another: "Well, I shall certainly
have an appetite for my dinner _to-night_! Why, if there had only been
a cup of the weakest kind of tea, or even o