t
inspiration concerning them.

In Colhassett, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the dinner hour and even the
supper hour were long past. In the commodious kitchen of Eleanor's
former home two old people were sitting in calico valanced rockers,
one by either window. The house was a pleasant old colonial structure,
now badly run down but still marked with that distinction that only
the instincts of aristocracy can bestow upon a decaying habitation.

A fattish child made her way up the walk, toeing out unnecessarily,
and let herself in by the back door without knocking.

"Hello, Mis' Chase and Mr. Amos," she said, seating herself in a
straight backed, yellow chair, and swinging her crossed foot
nonchalantly, "I thought I would come in to inquire about Eleanor. Ma
said that she heard that she was coming home to live again. Is she,
Mr. Amos?"

Albertina was not a peculiar favorite of Eleanor's grandfather. Amos
Chase had ideas of his own about the proper bringing up of children,
and the respect due from them to their elders. Also Albertina's father
had come from "poor stock." There was a strain of bad blood in her.
The women of the Weston families hadn't always "behaved themselves."
He therefore answered this representative of the youngest generation
rather shortly.

"I don't know nothing about it," he said.

"Why, father," the querulous old voice of Grandmother Chase protested,
"you know she's comin' home somewhere 'bout the end of July, she and
one of her new aunties and a hired girl they're bringing along to do
the work. I don't see why you can't answer the child's question."

"I don't know as I'm obligated to answer any questions that anybody
sees fit to put to me."

"Well, I _be_. Albertina, pass me my glasses from off the
mantel-tree-shelf, and that letter sticking out from behind the clock
and I'll read what she says."

Albertina, with a reproachful look at Mr. Amos, who retired coughing
exasperatedly behind a paper that he did not read, allowed herself to
be informed through the medium of a letter from Gertrude and a
postscript from Eleanor of the projected invasion of the Chase
household.

"I should think you'd rather have Eleanor come home by herself than
bringing a strange woman and a hired girl," Albertina contributed a
trifle tartly. The distinction of a hired girl in the family was one
which she had long craved on her own account.

"All nonsense, I call it," the old man ejaculated.

"Well, Eleena, she