lready
dressed, was hidden under snugly pinned veils and her trim little
figure lost under a flying kimono. Mrs. Carew was expecting the
twenty-eight members of the Santa Paloma Bridge Club on this particular
evening, and now, at three o'clock on a beautiful April afternoon, she
was almost frantic with fatigue and nervousness. The house had been
cleaned thoroughly the day before, rugs shaken, mirrors polished,
floors oiled; the grand piano had been closed, and pushed against the
wall; the reading-table had been cleared, and wheeled out under the
turn of the stairway; the pretty drawing-room and square big entrance
hall had been emptied to make room for the seven little card-tables
that were already set up, and for the twenty-eight straight-back chairs
that Mrs. Carew had collected from the dining-room, the bedrooms, the
halls, and even the nursery, for the occasion. All this had been done
the day before, and Mrs. Carew, awakening early in the morning to
uneasy anticipations of a full day, had yet felt that the main work of
preparation was out of the way.

But now, in mid-afternoon, nothing seemed done. There were flowers
still to arrange; there was the mild punch that Santa Paloma affected
at card parties to be finished; there was candy to be put about on the
tables, in little silver dishes; and new packs of cards, and pencils
and score-cards to be scattered about. And in the kitchen--But Mrs.
Carew's heart failed at the thought. True, her own two maids were being
helped out to-day by Mrs. Binney from the village, a tower of strength
in an emergency, and by Lizzie Binney, a worthy daughter of her mother;
but there had been so many stupid delays. And plates, and glasses, and
punch-cups, and silver, and napkins for twenty-eight meant such a lot
of counting and sorting and polishing! And somehow George and the
children must have dinner, and the Binneys and Celia and Annie must
eat, too.

"Well," thought Mrs. Carew, with a desperate glance at the kitchen
clock, "it will all be over pretty soon, thank goodness!"

A pleasant stir of preparation pervaded the kitchen. Mrs. Binney,
enormous, good-natured, capable, was opening crabs at one end of the
table, her sleeves rolled up, and her gingham dress, in the last stage
of age and thinness, protected by a new stiff white apron; Celia, Mrs.
Carew's cook, was sitting opposite her, dismembering two cold roasted
fowls; Lizzie Binney, as trim and pretty as her mother was shapeless