his seemed too stiffly ungracious, and
he added: "What delicious sponge-cake! You never get this out of New
England."

"We have to do something to make up for our doughnuts," Miss Simpson
suggested.

"Oh, I like doughnuts too," said Langbourne. "But you can't get the
right kind of doughnuts, either, in New York."

They began to talk about cooking. He told her of the tamales which he
had first tasted in San Francisco, and afterward found superabundantly
in New York; they both made a great deal of the topic; Miss Simpson had
never heard of tamales. He became solemnly animated in their exegesis,
and she showed a resolute interest in them.

They were in the midst of the forced discussion, when they heard a quick
foot on the brick walk, but they had both fallen silent when Miss
Bingham flounced elastically in upon them. She seemed to take in with a
keen glance which swept them from her lively eyes that they had not been
getting on, and she had the air of taking them at once in hand.

"Well, it's all right about Jenny," she said to Miss Simpson. "She'd a
good deal rather go day after to-morrow, anyway. What have you been
talking about? I don't want to make you go over the same ground. Have
you got through with the weather? The moon's out, and it feels more like
the beginning of June than the last of April. I shut the front door
against dor-bugs; I couldn't help it, though they won't be here for six
weeks yet. Do you have dor-bugs in New York, Mr. Langbourne?"

"I don't know. There may be some in the Park," he answered.

"We think a great deal of our dor-bugs in Upper Ashton," said Miss
Simpson demurely, looking down. "We don't know what we should do without
them."

"Lemonade!" exclaimed Miss Bingham, catching sight of the glasses and
saucers on the corner of the piano, where Miss Simpson had allowed
Langbourne to put them. "Has Aunt Elmira been giving you lemonade while
I was gone? I will just see about that!" She whipped out of the room,
and was back in a minute with a glass in one hand and a bit of
sponge-cake between the fingers of the other. "She had kept some for me!
Have you sung _Paloma_ for Mr. Langbourne, Barbara?"

"No," said Barbara, "we hadn't got round to it, quite."

"Oh, do!" Langbourne entreated, and he wondered that he had not asked
her before; it would have saved them from each ether.

"Wait a moment," cried Juliet Bingham, and she gulped the last draught
of her lemonade upon a final morsel of s