the harmony and
tranquillity that are conceded to be the best sauce for one's food. The
wedding, of course, was the all-absorbing topic of conversation; and
Billy, between Aunt Hannah's attempts to be polite, Marie's to be
sweet-tempered, Mrs. Hartwell's to be dictatorial, and her own to be
pacifying as well as firm, had a hard time of it. If it had not been
for two or three diversions created by little Kate, the meal would have
been, indeed, a dismal failure.

But little Kate--most of the time the personification of proper
little-girlhood--had a disconcerting faculty of occasionally dropping a
word here, or a question there, with startling effect. As, for instance,
when she asked Billy "Who's going to boss your wedding?" and again when
she calmly informed her mother that when _she_ was married she was not
going to have any wedding at all to bother with, anyhow. She was going
to elope, and she should choose somebody's chauffeur, because he'd know
how to go the farthest and fastest so her mother couldn't catch up with
her and tell her how she ought to have done it.

After luncheon Aunt Hannah went up-stairs for rest and recuperation.
Marie took little Kate and went for a brisk walk--for the same purpose.
This left Billy alone with her guest.

"Perhaps you would like a nap, too, Mrs. Hartwell," suggested Billy,
as they passed into the living-room. There was a curious note of almost
hopefulness in her voice.

Mrs. Hartwell scorned naps, and she said so very emphatically. She said
something else, too.

"Billy, why do you always call me 'Mrs. Hartwell' in that stiff, formal
fashion? You used to call me 'Aunt Kate.'"

"But I was very young then." Billy's voice was troubled. Billy had
been trying so hard for the last two hours to be the graciously cordial
hostess to this woman--Bertram's sister.

"Very true. Then why not 'Kate' now?"

Billy hesitated. She was wondering why it seemed so hard to call Mrs.
Hartwell "Kate."

"Of course," resumed the lady, "when you're Bertram's wife and my
sister--"

"Why, of course," cried Billy, in a sudden flood of understanding.
Curiously enough, she had never before thought of Mrs. Hartwell as _her_
sister. "I shall be glad to call you 'Kate'--if you like."

"Thank you. I shall like it very much, Billy," nodded the other
cordially. "Indeed, my dear, I'm very fond of you, and I was delighted
to hear you were to be my sister. If only--it could have stayed William
instead of Bertr