book
of people who are not in society. They never ask anybody to meals if
they can possibly help it; if some one happens in at meal-times they
tell him to pull up a chair--if they have to, or he shows no signs
first of going. But even among these people the instinct of
hospitality--the feeding form of it--lurks somewhere. In our
farm-boarding days--"

"Don't speak of them!" she implored.

"We once went to an evening party," he pursued, "where raw apples and
cold water were served."

"I thought I should die of hunger. And when we got home to our own
farmer's we ravaged the pantry for everything left from supper. It
wasn't much. There!" Lindora screamed. "There _is_ the taxi!" And the
shuddering sound of the clock making time at their expense penetrated
from the street. "Come!"

"How the instinct of economy lingers in us, too, long after the use
of it is outgrown. It's as bad as the instinct of hospitality. We
could easily afford to pay extra for the comfort of sitting here over
these broken victuals--"

"I tell you we shall be left," she retorted; and in the thirty-five
minutes they had at the station before their train started she
outlined a scheme of social reform which she meant to put in force as
soon as people began to gather in summer force at Lobster Cove.

He derided the notion; but she said, "You will see!" and in rather
more time than it takes to tell it they were settled in their cottage,
where, after some unavoidable changes of cook and laundress, they were
soon in perfect running order.

By this time Lobster Cove was in the full tide of lunching and being
lunched. The lunches were almost exclusively ladies' lunches, and the
ladies came to them with appetites sharpened by the incomparable air
of those real Lobster Cove days which were all cloudless skies and
west winds, and by the vigorous automobile exercise of getting to one
another's cottages. They seized every pretext for giving these feasts,
marked each by some vivid touch of invention within the limits of the
graceful convention which all felt bound not to transcend. It was some
surprising flavor in the salad, or some touch of color appealing to
the eye only; or it was some touch in the ice-cream, or some daring
substitution of a native dish for it, as strawberry or peach
shortcake; or some bold transposition in the order of the courses; or
some capricious arrangement of the decoration, or the use of wild
flowers, or even weeds (as meadow-rue