atron
even when she became a grandmother.

Marjorie, with cooking to do, tied up in a long orange colored apron,
almost forgot things. She loved to make things to eat. Lucille,
meanwhile, sat on the piano-stool and played snatches of "The Long,
Long Trail," and the men, Lucille's negligible one and Marjorie's Mr.
Logan, made themselves very useful in the way of getting plates and
arranging piles of crackers. The small black kitten which had been a
present to Lucille from the janitor, who therefore was a mother to it
while the girls were out, sat expectantly on the edge of all the places
where he shouldn't be, purring loudly and having to be put down at
five-minute intervals.

"I suppose this is a sort of celebration of your having your husband
back," said the Lucille man presently to Marjorie. He had been told
so, indeed, by Lucille, who was under that impression herself, Logan
looked faintly surprised. He, to be frank, had forgotten all about
Marjorie's having a husband who had to be celebrated.

Marjorie nearly spilled the scallops she was serving at that moment,
and the kitten, losing its self-control entirely, climbed on the table
with a cry of entreaty for the excellent fish-smelling dishful of
things to eat. It was lucky for Marjorie that he did, because while
she was struggling with him Lucille answered innocently for her.

"Yes, more or less. But he's late. Where's your perfectly good
husband, Marge?"

"Late, I'm afraid," Marjorie answered, smiling, and wondering at
herself for being able to smile. "We aren't to wait for him."

"Sensible child," Lucille answered. "I'm certainly very hungry."

She drew her chair up to the low table the men had pushed into the
center of the room, sent one of them to open the window, rather than
turn out the cheerful light of the gas grate, and the real business of
the party began.

It was going on very prosperously, that meal; even Mr. Logan was
heroically eating the same things the rest did, and not taking up more
than his fair share of the conversation, when there was a quick step on
the stairs. Nobody heard it but Marjorie, who stood, frozen, just as
she had risen to get a fork for somebody. She knew Francis's step, and
when he clicked the little knocker she forced herself to go over and
let him in.

He came in exactly as if he belonged there; but after one quick glance
at the visitors he drew Marjorie aside into the little inner room.

"Marjorie, I've