chairs and on the poor, broad sofas, but they
talked familiarly of their household concerns quite as if they had been
in one of their own second-best rooms on any common day.

On a table in one cool corner was a huge bowl of thin silver, whence
issued a baffling fragrance. Discreet observation, as the throng
gathered, revealed this to contain a large block of ice and a colored
liquid in which floated cherries with slices of lemon and orange. A
ladle of generous lines reposed in the bowl, and circling it on the
table were many small cups.

There was a feeling of relief when these details had been ascertained.
Fear had been felt that Miss Caroline might forget herself and offer
them a glass of wine, or something worse, from a large black bottle; for
Little Arcady believed, in its innocent remoteness, that the devil's
stuff came in no other way than large black bottles. Miss Eubanks had
made sure that the ladies wore their white ribbons. Marcella's own satin
bow was larger than common, so that no one might mistake the principles
of the heart beating beneath it.

But the cool big bowl with its harmless fruit restored confidence at
once, and when Miss Caroline urged them to try Clem's punch they
refrained not. The walk to the north end of town on a sultry afternoon
had qualified them to receive its consolations, and they gathered
gratefully about.

Marcella Eubanks quaffed the first beaker, a trifle timorously, it is
true, for the word "punch" had stirred within her a vague memory of
sinister associations. Sometime she had read a tale in which one Howard
Melville had gone to the great city and wrecked a career of much promise
by accepting a glass of something from the hands of a beautiful but
thoughtless girl, pampered child of the banker with whom he had secured
a position. For a dread moment Marcella seemed to recall that the fatal
draught was named "punch." But after a tentative sip of the compound at
hand, she decided that it must have been something else--doubtless "a
glass of sparkling wine." For this punch before her was palpably of a
babe's innocence. Indeed it tasted rather like an inferior lemonade. But
it was cold, and Marcella tossed off a second cup of it. She could make
better lemonade herself, and she murmured slightingly of the stuff to
Aunt Delia McCormick.

"It wants more lemons and more sugar," said Marcella, firmly. Aunt Delia
pressed back the white satin bow on her bosom in order to manage her
sec