odded several
times, increasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice talked
briskly; but the brooding waitress continued to brood. A faint snap of
the fingers failed to disturb her; nor was a covert hissing whisper of
avail, and Mrs. Adams was beginning to show signs of strain when her
daughter relieved her.

"Imagine our trying to eat anything so hot as soup on a night like
this!" Alice laughed. "What COULD have been in the cook's mind not to
give us something iced and jellied instead? Of course it's because she's
equatorial, herself, originally, and only feels at home when Mr. Satan
moves it north." She looked round at Gertrude, who stood behind her. "Do
take this dreadful soup away!"

Thus directly addressed, Gertrude yielded her attention, though
unwillingly, and as if she decided only by a hair's weight not to
revolt, instead. However, she finally set herself in slow motion; but
overlooked the supposed head of the table, seeming to be unaware of
the sweltering little man who sat there. As she disappeared toward
the kitchen with but three of the cups upon her tray he turned to look
plaintively after her, and ventured an attempt to recall her.

"Here!" he said, in a low voice. "Here, you!"

"What is it, Virgil?" his wife asked.

"What's her name?"

Mrs. Adams gave him a glance of sudden panic, and, seeing that the
guest of the evening was not looking at her, but down at the white cloth
before him, she frowned hard, and shook her head.

Unfortunately Alice was not observing her mother, and asked, innocently:
"What's whose name, papa?"

"Why, this young darky woman," he explained. "She left mine."

"Never mind," Alice laughed. "There's hope for you, papa. She hasn't
gone forever!"

"I don't know about that," he said, not content with this impulsive
assurance. "She LOOKED like she is." And his remark, considered as a
prediction, had begun to seem warranted before Gertrude's return with
china preliminary to the next stage of the banquet.

Alice proved herself equal to the long gap, and rattled on through it
with a spirit richly justifying her mother's praise of her as "always
ready to smooth things over"; for here was more than long delay to be
smoothed over. She smoothed over her father and mother for Russell; and
she smoothed over him for them, though he did not know it, and remained
unaware of what he owed her. With all this, throughout her prattlings,
the girl's bright eyes kept seeking his with an