Fire Chief died right at the
height o' the full skirts. She's kep' cuttin' over an' cuttin' over, an'
by the looks o' the Spring plates she can keep right on at it. She
really can't afford to go _out_ o' mournin'. I don't blame her a bit."

"She told me the other day," remarked Libbie Liberty, "that she was real
homesick for some company food. She said she'd been ask' in to eat with
this family an' that, most hospitable but very plain. An' seems though
she couldn't wait for a company lay-out."

"She won't go anywheres in her crape," Mis' Sykes turned to me,
supplementing Calliope's former information. "She's a very superior
woman,--she graduated in Oils in the city,--an' she's fitted for any
society, say where who _will_. We always say about her that nobody's so
delicate as Mis' Fire Chief Merriman."

"She don't take strangers in very ready, anyway," Mis' Holcomb explained
to me. "She belongs to what you might call the old school. She's very
sensitive to _every_thing."

The moment came when I had unintentionally produced a hush by serving a
salad unknown in Friendship. When almost at once I perceived what I had
done, I confess that I looked at Calliope in a kind of dread lest this
too were a _faux pas_, and I took refuge in some question about the
coming Carnival. But my attention was challenged by my maid, who was in
the doorway announcing a visitor.

"Company, ma'am," she said.

And when I had bidden her to ask that I be excused for a little:--

"Please, ma'am," she said, "she says she has to see you _now_."

And when I suggested the lady's card:--

"Oh, it's Mis' Fire Chief Merriman," the maid imparted easily.

"Mis' Fire Chief Merriman!" exclaimed every one at table. "Well
forevermore! Speakin' of angels! She must 'a' forgot the tea was bein'."

In my living-room, in her smartly freshened spring toilet of mourning,
Mis' Fire Chief Merriman rose to greet me. She was very tall and slight,
and her face was curiously like an oblong yellow brooch which fastened
her gown at the throat.

"My dear friend," she said, "I felt, after your kind invitation, that I
must pay my respects _during_ your tea. Afterwards wouldn't be the same.
It's a tea, and there couldn't be lanterns an' bunting or anything o'
the sort. So I felt I could come in."

"You are very good," I murmured, and in some perplexity, as she resumed
her seat, I sat down also. Mis' Merriman sought in the pocket of her
petticoat for a black-bordered h