Elise Mokey and Mary Pinfall came in one evening to see Bel Bree and
Kate.

There had been company to tea up-stairs, and the dishes were more
than usual, and the hour was a little later.

Kate was putting up the last of the cooking utensils, and scalding
down the big tin dish-pan and the sink. Bel was up-stairs.

A table with a fresh brown linen cloth upon it, two white plates and
cups, and two white _napkins_, stood out on the kitchen floor under
the gas-light. The dumb-waiter came rumbling down, with toast dish,
tea and coffee pots, oyster dish and muffin plate. Several slices of
cream toast were left, and there was a generous remnant of nicely
browned scalloped oysters. The half muffins, buttered hot, looked
tender and tempting still.

Kate removed the dishes, sent up the waiter, and producing some nice
little stone-ware nappies hot from the hot closet, transferred the
food from the china to these, laying it neatly together, and
replaced them in the closet, to wait till Bel should come. The tea
and coffee she poured into small white pitchers, also hot in
readiness, and set them on the range corner. Then she washed the
porcelain and silver in fresh-drawn scalding water, wiped and set
them safely on the long, white sideboard. There they gleamed in the
gas-light, and lent their beauty to the brightness of the room, just
as much as they would have done in actual using.

"But what a lot of trouble!" said Elise Mokey.

"Half a dozen dishes?" returned Kate. "Just three minutes' work; and
a warm, fresh supper to make it worth while. Besides rubbing the
silver once in four weeks, instead of every Friday. A Yankee kitchen
is a labor-saving institution, Mrs. Scherman says."

Down came the waiter again, and down the stairs came Bel. Kate
brought two more cups and plates and napkins.

"Now, girls, come and take some tea," she said, drawing up the
chairs.

Mrs. Scherman was not strict about "kitchen company." She gave the
girls freely to understand that a friend or two happening in now and
then to see them, were as welcome to their down-stairs table as her
own happeners in were to hers. "I know it is just the cosiness and
the worth-while of home and living," she said. "And I'll trust the
'now and then' of it to you."

The hint of reasonable limit, and the word of trust, were better
than lock and law.

"How nice this is!" said Mary Pinfall, as Bel put a hot muffin,
mellow with sweet butter, upon her plate.

"If