or music will strike its key.

"My land, the oven--the warming oven. Mary ain't got one. However will
we keep the stuff hot?" Mis' Winslow demanded. "What time is it?"

"We'd ought to had my big coffee-pot. We'd ought to set two going. I
donno why I didn't think of it," Mis' Moran grieved.

"Well," said Mis' Mortimer Bates, "when the men get here--if they ever
_do_ get here--we'll send one of 'em off somewheres for the truck we
forgot. What time is it?"

"Here comes a whole cartload of folks," Mis' Moran announced. "I hope
and pray they've got the oysters--they'd ought to be popped in the
baking oven a minute. What time did you say it is?"

"It's twenty minutes past seven," Mis' Winslow said, pushing her hair
straight back, regardless of its part, "and we ain't ready within 'leven
hundred miles."

"Well, if they only all get here," Mis' Bates said, ringing golden and
white stuffed eggs on Mary's blue platter; "it's their all being here
when she gets here that I want. I ain't worried about the supper--much."

"The road's black with folks," Mis' Moran went on. "I'm so _deadly_
afraid I didn't make enough sandwiches. Oh, I donno why it wasn't given
me to make more, I'm sure."

"Who's seeing to them in the parlour? Who's getting their baskets out
here? Where they finding a place for their wraps? Who's lighting the
rest of the lamps? What time is it?" demanded Mis' Winslow, cutting her
cakes.

"Oh," said Mis' Bates from a cloud of brown butter about the cooking
stove, "I donno whether we've done right. I donno but we've broke our
word to the Christmas paper. I donno whether we ain't going to get
ourselves criticized for this as never folks was criticized before."

Mis' Moran changed her chair to the draughtless corner back of the
cooking stove and offered to stir the savoury saucepan.

"I know it," she said, "I know it. We never planned much in the first
start. It grew and it grew like it grew with its own bones. But mebbe
there's some won't believe that, one secunt."

Mis' Winslow straightened up from the table and held out a hand with
fingers frosting-tipped.

"Well," she said, with a great period, "if we _have_ broke our word to
the Christmas paper, I'd rather stand up here with my word broke this
way than with it kept so good it hurt me. Is it half-past seven yet?"

"I wish Ellen Bourne was here," Mis' Bates observed. "She sent her salad
dressing over and lent her silver and her Christmas rose for the
t