r game."

"Very nice, I'm sure," responded Mrs. Meadowsweet. She spread out her
fat hands on her lap and untied her bonnet-strings. "It's hot," she
said. "Do you find the dog-days try you very much, Mrs. Bertram?"

"I don't feel the heat particularly," said Mrs. Bertram. She was anxious
to assume a friendly tone, but was painfully conscious that her voice
was icy.

"Well, that's lucky for you," remarked the visitor. "I flush up a good
deal. Beatrice never does. She takes after her father; he was
wonderfully cool, poor man. Have you got a newspaper of any sort about,
that you'd lend me, Mrs. Bertram?"

"Oh, certainly," answered Mrs. Bertram, in some astonishment. "Here is
yesterday's _Times_."

"I'll make it into a fan, if you have no objection. Now, that's better.
Dear, dear, what a nice room!"

Mrs. Bertram fidgetted on her chair. She wondered how many more times
Mrs. Meadowsweet would descant on the elegancies of her drawing-room.
She need not have feared. Whatever Mrs. Meadowsweet was she was honest;
and at that very moment her eyes lighted on the felt which covered the
floor. Mrs. Meadowsweet had never been trained in a school of art, but,
as she said to herself, no one knew better what was what than she did;
above all, no one knew better what was _comme il faut_ in the
matter of carpets. Meadowsweet, poor man, had been particular about his
carpets. There were grades in carpets as in all other things, and felt,
amongst these grades, ranked low, very low indeed. Kidderminster might
be permitted in bedrooms, although Mrs. Meadowsweet would scorn to see
it in any room in _her_ house, but Brussels was surely the only
correct carpet for people of medium means to cover their drawing-room
floors with. The report that Mrs. Bertram's drawing-room wore a mantle
of felt had reached Mrs. Meadowsweet's ears. She had emphatically
declined to believe in any such calumny, and yet now her own eyes saw,
her own good-humored, kind eyes, that wished to think well of all the
world, rested on that peculiar greeny-brown felt, which surely must have
come to its present nondescript hue by the aid of many suns. The whole
room looked immediately almost sordid to the poor woman, and she felt no
longer anxious for Beatrice to appreciate its beauties.

At that moment Clara appeared with the tea. Now, if there was a thing
Mrs. Meadowsweet was particular about it was her tea; she revelled in
her tea; she always bought it from some very par