t table. And not
until then did Calliope remember her other news.

"Land, land," she said, "I like to forgot. Who do you s'pose I had a
telephone from just before you come? Delia. She'd just got home this
morning on the Fast Mail. An' the Proudfits'll be here, noon train."

Delia indeed had come on the same glorified train that Abel and I had
seen stop at the draw, only she had alighted at Friendship station and
had hurried up to the Proudfits' to make ready for their home-coming.
And since those whom we know best never come to Friendship without a
welcome, it was instantly incumbent on us all to be what Calliope called
"up in arms an' flyin' round."

As soon as we were alone:--

"I've planned noon lunch for 'em," Calliope told me; "I'm goin' to see
to the meat--leg o' lamb, sissin' hot, an' a big bowl o' mint. Mis'
Holcomb's got to freeze a freezer o' her lemon ice--she gets it smooth
as a mud pie. Mis' Toplady, she'll come in on the baked stuff--raised
rolls an' a big devil's food. An'--I'd kind o' meant to look to you for
the salad, but I s'pose you won't want to bother now...." And when I had
hastened to assume the salad, "Well, I _am_ glad," she owned, with a
relieved sigh. "The Proudfit salads they can't a soul tell what
ingredients is in 'em, chew high though we may. I know you know about
them queer organs an' canned sea reptiles they use now in cookin'. I've
come to the solemn conclusion I ain't studied physiology an' the animal
sciences close enough myself to make a rill up-to-date salad."

Before noon we were all at Proudfit House--to which I had taken care to
leave word for Abel to follow me--and we were letting in the sun, making
ready the table, filling the vases with garden roses; and in the library
Calliope laid a fire "in case they get chilly, travellin' so," she said,
but I think rather it was in longing somehow to summon a secret agency
to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been
agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be
told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held
a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time
held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new
meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its
vines and its climbing rose and its canaries:--

"I marvel, I _marvel_ at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear
place and the dear people