s just in the humor to up
and light out, too; and your mother's got no hankering for hanging over a
hot stove in this weather."

She transferred the pile of soup plates from the sideboard and seated
herself. Her husband poured the soup, and the plates were passed from
hand to hand until all were served. "If the Sandyses could see us now,
Del," said Arthur.

"Or the Whitneys," suggested Adelaide, and both laughed as people laugh
when they think the joke, or the best part of it, is a secret between
themselves.

Nothing more was said until the soup was finished and Mrs. Ranger rose
and began to remove the dishes. Adelaide, gazing at the table, her
thoughts far away, became uneasy, stirred, looked up; she saw that the
cause of her uneasiness was the eyes of her father fixed steadily upon
her in a look which she could not immediately interpret. When he saw that
he had her attention, he glanced significantly toward her mother, waiting
upon them. "If the Sandyses or the Whitneys could see us _now_!" he said.

She reddened, pushed back her chair, and sprang up. "Oh, I never
thought!" she exclaimed. "Sit down, mother, and let _me_ do that. You
and father have got us into awful bad ways, always indulging us and
waiting on us."

"You let me alone," replied her mother. "I'm used to it. I did my own
work for fifteen years after we were married, and I'd have been doing it
yet if your father hadn't just gone out and got a girl and brought her
in and set her to work. No; sit down, Del. You don't know anything about
work. I didn't bring you up to be a household drudge."

But Del was on her way to the kitchen, whence she presently reappeared
with a platter and a vegetable dish. Down the front of her skirt was a
streak of grease. "There!" exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, coloring high with
exasperation, "your dress is spoiled! I don't believe I can take it out
of that kind of goods without leaving a spot. Hiram, I do wish you
wouldn't meddle with the children! It seems to me you've got enough to do
to 'tend your own affairs at the mill."

This was unanswerable, or so it seemed to her husband. Once more he felt
in the wrong, when he knew that, somehow, he was in the right.

But Adelaide was laughing and going forward gracefully with her duties as
waitress. "It's nothing," she said; "the stain will come out; and, if it
doesn't, there's no harm done. The dress is an old thing. I've worn it
until everybody's sick of the sight of it."

Mrs. R