The music began at seven promptly and ended at ten. A little before
that time, Mrs. Marshall, followed by any one who felt like helping,
went out into the kitchen and made hot coffee and sandwiches, and when
the last chord had stopped vibrating, the company adjourned into the
dining-room and partook of this simple fare. During the evening no
talk was allowed except the occasional wranglings of the musicians
over tempo and shading, but afterwards, every one's tongue, chastened
by the long silence, was loosened into loud and cheerful loquacity.
Professor Marshall, sitting at the head of the table, talked faster
and louder than any one else, throwing the ball to his especial
favorite, brilliant young Professor Saunders, who tossed it back with
a sureness and felicity of phrase which he had learned nowhere but in
this give-and-take. Mrs. Marshall poured the coffee, saw that every
one was served with sandwiches, and occasionally when the talk,
running over every known topic, grew too noisy, or the discussion too
hot, cast in one of the pregnant and occasionally caustic remarks of
which she held the secret. They were never brilliant, Mrs. Marshall's
remarks--but they were apt to have a dry humor, and almost always when
she had said her brief say? there loomed out of the rainbow mist of
her husband's flashing, controversial talk the outlines of the true
proportions of the case.

After the homely feast was eaten, each guest rose and carried his own
cup and saucer and plate into the kitchen in a gay procession, and
since it was well known that, for the most part, the Marshalls "did
their own work," several of the younger ones helped wash the dishes,
while the musicians put away the music-racks and music, and the rest
put on their wraps. Then Professor Marshall stood at the door holding
up a lamp while the company trooped down the long front walk to
the gate in the hedge, and turned along the country road to the
cross-roads where the big Interurban cars whizzed by.

All this happened with that unbroken continuity which was the
characteristic of the Marshall life, most marking them as different
from the other faculty families. Week after week, and month after
month, this program was followed with little variation, except for the
music which was played, and the slight picturesque uncertainty as
to whether old Reinhardt would or would not arrive mildly under the
influence of long Sunday imbibings. Not that this factor interfered at