xious,' or something like that--it means the
same thing. Evidently they've been told all about us. What would you
give, Jo Burnside, to know how we've been described?"

"We probably haven't been described. Men never describe people. They just
say, 'She's all right, you'll like her,' or something equally vague."

"It would give me a chance to wear my lilac muslin," mused Sally quite
irrelevantly, but Josephine caught her meaning.

"Afternoon tea on the lawn? Then do let's have it. Anything to see you in
that lilac muslin."

"Then we'll trail over the lawn to meet them--only the lilac muslin
doesn't trail--and we'll hold out our hands at a medium sort of angle, so
that we'll be prepared to reciprocate whatever sort of high-low shake
fresh from abroad they give us. Since Dorothy Chase came back last fall
she gives a side-to-side jerk that stops your breath short just where it
happens to be at the moment. What do you suppose they'll be like? Young
ladies from two years' residence in Germany, or just plain, jolly girls?"

Josephine shook her head, but her mother replied in a quiet tone of
conviction: "I doubt if the daughter of that family will be anything
but a simple-mannered girl, no matter how experienced she may be in
foreign usages."

Sally nodded. "So I'm hoping. But 'Miss Carew'--with a voice--sounds more
formidable. It's for Miss Carew I'm going to have afternoon tea. I'll go
out now and make my little cakes. And I'll have very, very thin bread and
butter. I've just one cherished jar of the choicest Orange Pekoe, so the
tea will be above reproach. And my one pride is my linen--you know how
much mother always kept--not only her own but Grandmother Rudd's." Then
she vanished, quite suddenly, from the doorway, as if, having once
mentioned the mother of whom she seldom spoke, she could not come back
again to other subjects until a period of silence had intervened.

"I'm so anxious to see her put away the black clothes," said Josephine
to her mother. "It will be good for her to wear the lilac muslin, for now
she's made it she can't bring herself to put it on, though she knows how
we all want to see her in colours again. Speaking of colours--Jarvis said
this morning that by the fence in the south meadow the grass was blue
with wild violets. I believe I'll go and pick a big bunch for Sally's
tea-table."

"It seems rather early for tea on the lawn," suggested Mrs. Burnside,
"though I couldn't bear to damp Sally's ar