lway, a young, clear voice calling, then the same
footsteps, fleeter now, on the attic stairway, were quite unheard.

* * * * *

Pinky's arms were around her mother's neck and for one awful moment it
looked as if both were to be decapitated by the trunk lid, so violent
had been Mrs. Brewster's start of surprise.

Incoherent little cries, and sentences unfinished:

"Pinky! Why--my baby! We didn't get your telegram. Did you--"

"No; I didn't. I just thought I--Don't look so dazed, mummy--You're all
smudged, too--what in the world!" Pinky straightened her hat and looked
about the attic. "Why, mother! You're--you're house cleaning!" There was
a stunned sort of look on her face. Pinky's last visit home had been in
June, all hammocks, and roses, and especially baked things, and motor
trips into the country.

"Of course. This is September. But if I'd known you were coming--Come
here to the window. Let mother see you. Is that the kind of hat
they're--why, it's a winter one, isn't it? Already! Dear me, I've just
got used to the angle of my summer one. You must telephone father."

Miz' Merz, damply calicoed, rose from a corner and came forward, wiping
a moist and parboiled hand on her skirt. "Ha' do, Pinky. Ain't forgot
your old friends, have you?"

"It's Mrs. Merz!" Pinky put her cool, sweet fingers into the other
woman's spongy clasp. "Why, hello, Mrs. Merz! Of course when there's
house cleaning--I'd forgotten all about house cleaning--that there was
such a thing, I mean."

"It's got to be done," replied Miz' Merz, severely.

Pinky, suddenly looking like one of her own magazine covers (in tailor
clothes), turned swiftly to her mother. "Nothing of the kind," she said,
crisply. She looked about the hot, dusty, littered room. She included
and then banished it all with one sweeping gesture. "Nothing of the
kind. This is--this is an anachronism."

"Mebbe so," retorted Miz' Merz with equal crispness. "But it's got to be
cleaned just the same. Yessir; it's got to be cleaned."

They smiled at each other then, the mother and daughter. They descended
the winding attic stairs happily, talking very fast and interrupting
each other.

Mrs. Brewster's skirt was still pinned up. Her hair was bound in the
protecting towel. "You must telephone father. No, let's surprise him.
You'll hate the dinner--built around Miz Merz; you know--boiled. Well,
you know what a despot she is."

It was hot for Septem