re folks die from the lack o' good
things than from eatin' 'em."

"You'll have to look out," said Miss Mehitable warningly, following her
friend's lead to the sunny living-room where the table was spread. "It's
a sayin' that good cooks are always cross. The better you cook the more
you must watch to have your temper as sweet as your sauces."

"Ho! Vinegar's just as important as oil," retorted the other. "You're so
smooth to everybody it's a good thing I came to live with you and keep
you from bein' imposed upon."

Miss Mehitable laughed. "You think together we make a pretty good salad,
do you?" she returned.

When dinner was on the table and they were both seated, Miss Upton spoke
again:

"I wonder how you're goin' to like it to the port?" she said.

"Awful rheumatic, I sh'd think 'twould be," returned Mrs. Whipp.

"Pretty soon we'll have to be goin'," said Miss Upton. "I usually lock
everything up here tight as a drum for three months. I was talkin' to a
man in town yesterday that thought it was a joke that folks in Keefe
just went a few miles to their seashore cottages. He was from Chicago
where you have to go a thousand miles to get anywhere. I told him I
couldn't see anything funny about it. Keefe was a village and Keefeport
was a resort; but he kept on laughin' and said it was like lockin' the
door of one home and goin' across the street to another, then back again
in the fall. I told him I was full as satisfied as I would be to have
to make my way through Indians and buffaloes to get anywhere as you have
to in those wild Western cities. He claimed that it was perfectly
civilized around Chicago now; but of course he'd say that."

"H'm," returned Mrs. Whipp, non-committally.

"Now I was thinkin', Charlotte, that there ain't a reason in the world
why you should go to the port if you don't want to. You can stay right
here and look after the house. I shall move the shop goods just as I
always do to my little port place."

"You don't get along there alone, do you?" asked Charlotte hastily.

"No; one o' the schoolgirls is always glad to live with me in vacation
and work for her board. I had Nellie McIntyre last summer."

"Oh, of course, if you'd rather have Nellie."

"I wouldn't," said Miss Upton calmly; "but she don't have rheumatism nor
mind the dampness. She thinks it's a great chance to be to the shore and
swim every day, and she's happy as a bird from mornin' till night. If
she ain't to go this year,