"Do we?" asked Elizabeth, yawning daintily. "I'm sure I don't know what we have. Annita is perfectly competent to attend to everything in the kitchen, and I never interfere. She doesn't like it, and so why should I." "What are you paying for butter this winter?" grandma wanted to know, after a thoughtful pause. "I'm sure I don't know, the usual price, I suppose. Sam attends to the bills. He looks them over every night when he comes home, and gives Annita the money to pay them with." "Hum!" commented grandma, surveying her granddaughter keenly over the top of her spectacles; "that's a new way to keep house, seems to me." "It's a nice way, I know that," laughed Elizabeth. She had changed subtly from the shy, undeveloped girl who had left Innisfield less than a year ago into a luxuriance of bloom and beauty which astonished the older woman. There was an air of poise, of elegance, of assured dignity about her slender figure which fitted her as did her gown. "It must be easy, certainly," agreed Mrs. Carroll, sniffing delicately, after a well-remembered fashion. Elizabeth laughed and shrugged her shoulders in a way she had caught from Evelyn Tripp. "Now you know you are dying to lecture me, grandma," she said caressingly; "but you see, dear, that things are decidedly different here in Boston, and-- But here comes Sam; he'll be so glad to see you." Mrs. Carroll was very cheerful and chatty with the young people that evening. She told them all the Innisfield news in her most spirited fashion, and never once by word or look expressed her growing disapproval of what her shrewd old eyes were telling her. Miss McMurtry, who stood with her ear glued to the crack of the door for a long half hour, finally retired with a contemptuous toss of her black head. Then, the coast being clear, she found opportunity to convey to their destination the comestibles dutifully provided for maternal consumption. "She's full as easy as the young one for all her meddlin' ways," said Miss McMurtry, "an' she'll be leavin' in the mornin', so there'll be no back talk comin' from her." But for once Annita was mistaken in her premises. Mrs. Carroll, it is true, made no immediate reference to the disclosures afforded by her daring invasion of the kitchen fastnesses, nor did she even remotely allude to the probable date of her departure for Innisfield. "I don't want you should make company of me, Lizzie," she said pleasantly, "or put yourself out a mite. I'll just join right in and do whatever you're planning to do." Elizabeth puckered her pretty forehead perplexedly; she was thinking that Grandma Carroll's unannounced visit would necessitate the hasty giving up of a gay luncheon and theatre party planned for that very afternoon. Tears of vexation sparkled in her brown eyes, as she took down the telephone receiver.