andkerchief.

"When you're in mourning so," she observed, "folks forget you. They
don't really forget you, either. But they get used to missing you
places, an' they don't always remember to miss you. I did appreciate
your inviting me to-day so. Because I'm just as fond of meeting my
friends as I was before the chief died."

And when I had made an end of murmuring something:--

"Really," she went on placidly, "it ought to be the custom to go out in
society when you're in mourning if you never did any other time. You
need distraction then if you ever needed it in your life. An' the chief
would 'a' been the first to feel that too. He was very partial to going
out in company."

And when I had made an end of murmuring something else:--

"You were very thoughtful to give me an invitation for this afternoon,"
she said. "An' I felt that I must stop in an' tell you so, even if I
couldn't attend."

Serenely she spread her black crape fan and swayed it. In the
dining-room my guests proceeded with their lonely salad toward a
probable lonely dessert. At thought of that dessert and of that salad, a
suggestion, partly impulsive and partly flavoured with some faint
reminiscence, at once besieged me, and in it I divined a solution of the
moment.

"Mrs. Merriman," I said eagerly, "may I send you in a cup of strawberry
ice? I've some early strawberries from the city."

She turned on me her great dark eyes, with their flat curve of shadow
accenting her sadness.

"I'm sure you are very kind," she said simply. "An' I should be pleased,
I'm sure."

I rose, hesitating, longing to say what I had in mind.

"I'd really like your opinion," I said, "on rather a new salad I'm
trying. Now would you not--"

"A salad?" Mis' Merriman repeated. "The chief," she said reflectively,
"was very partial to all green salads. I don't think men usually care
for them the way he did."

"Dear Mrs. Merriman," said I at this, "a cup of bouillon and a bit of
chicken breast and a drop of creamed cauliflower--"

"Oh," she murmured, "really, I couldn't think--"

And when I had made my cordial insistence she looked up at me for a
moment solemnly, over her crape fan. I thought that her eyes with that
flat, underlying curve of shadow were as if tears were native to them.
Her grief and the usages of grief had made of her some one other than
her first self, some one circumscribed, wary of living.

"Oh," she said wistfully, "I ain't had anything like that s