its way to her plate.

"That's Polly Dudley."

"Oh! Dr. Dudley's daughter?"

"Yes. She's come over to see Miss Sterling. They're very
intimate."

"Miss Sterling?" mused Miss Mullaly, with a sweeping glance round
the table. "I don't believe I've seen her."

"Yes, you have. She was down to tea last night. She had on a
light blue waist, and sat over at the end."

"Oh, I remember now! She's little and sweet-looking. Somebody
told me she had nervous prostration. Too bad! She is so young and
pretty!"

A tiny sneer fluttered from face to face, skipping one here and
there in its course. It ended in Miss Castlevaine's "Huh!"

"I think Miss Sterling is real pretty!" Miss Crilly, from the
opposite side, beamed on the "new lady."

"She has faded dreadfully," asserted Mrs. Crump. "They used to
call her handsome years ago, though she never was my style o'
beauty. But now--" She shook her head with hard emphasis.

"She has been through a good deal," observed Mrs. Grace mildly.

"No more'n I have!" was the retort. "If she'd stop thinking about
herself and eat like other folks, she'd be better."

"Nervous prostration patients have to be careful about their diet,
don't they?" ventured Miss Mullaly.

"She hasn't got it!" snapped Mrs. Crump.

"She thinks she has." Miss Castlevaine's thick lips curved in a
smile of scorn.

"If she can't digest things, it won't do her much good to eat
them," interposed Miss Major positively. "Nobody could digest
these waffles--they're slack this morning."

Miss Castlevaine gave her plate a little push. "I wish I needn't
ever see another waffle," she fretted.

"Oh!" exclaimed the "new lady," "I don't understand how anybody can
get tired of waffles!"

"Nor I!" laughed Miss Mullaly's right-hand neighbor. "I shall have
to tell you about the time I went to Cousin Dorothy's wedding
luncheon.

"I never had eaten waffles but once; that was at my aunt's. She
had gone to housekeeping directly after the wedding ceremony, and
was spoken of in the family as 'the bride.' I had been her first
guest, and, as she had treated me to waffles, I thought waffles and
brides always went together. So when I was included in the
invitation to Dorothy's wedding luncheon, my first thought was of
waffles. I said something about it to my brother, and Ralph was
just tease enough to lead me on. He told me that the table would
be piled with waffles, great stacks of them at every plate! Like a