"What does he do that’s wicked?" asked Angelica, avid for details of rich people’s sins. "Everything--drink and women and blasphemy. Why, right now he’s gone off with a girl. Courtland saw him meet her." But no further questions on the part of Angelica could elicit any more details. Annie didn’t want to talk about him; he was what she called a hardened sinner, and she considered him best ignored. She began to talk of Polly. "She’s the best of the lot," she said. "She’s a real lady. She’s reasonable. She’ll never ask you for all sorts of outlandish things, all hours of the day and night, like the other one. She’s stingy, I must confess; she never gives you a penny, nor even an old dress or a hat; but at least she’s nice and polite. I’m sorry for her, too, losing that little boy. He was a sweet little thing, even if----” The cook appeared on the porch--an untidy, bedraggled old Irishwoman. "Come in, the two of ye!" she said. "Let your friend come in and eat a bite with us, Annie, if she’s not too proud." "You might as well," said Annie. "They won’t be eating for another half an hour, and we’ve got just as good as they have." "Better," said the cook. "You can trust me for that, Annie McCall!" They went, not into the kitchen, as Angelica had expected, but into a nice little dining-room, to a meal served and eaten with decorum and propriety, a table daintily laid, and a breakfast beyond cavil--coffee with cream, beefsteak, cold ham, new-laid eggs, hot rolls, corn-bread, jams and marmalades, and a fine bowl of fruit. The cook sat down behind the coffee-pot, with Angelica beside her. Presently in came the chambermaid, the German laundress, and a mild little thing known as the "second girl"; and, at last, swaggering, in his shirt-sleeves, Courtland the chauffeur. His eye fell at once upon Angelica. "Hello!" he said. "What’s the matter? Did they kick you out up-stairs?" "They sent me down to see how you behaved yourself," she answered, promptly. She was quite able to hold her own with this young bully, and though her manner was too free and easy to suit Annie, the others were delighted--especially the cook. "_Now_ will ye be good?" she would cry to the worsted Courtland. "Now you’ve met your match, me lad!" Angelica enjoyed all this beyond measure. This homely simplicity, combined with the greatest comfort, this atmosphere in which she lost her painful consciousness of inferiority, in which she was among equals and able to breathe freely, invigorated and satisfied her. She grew more and more assured, her sallies more and more outrageous, in a violent badinage that continued until the bell rang and Annie ran off up-stairs. She returned to tell Courtland that he was wanted in fifteen minutes. "Oh, Gawd!" he groaned. "It’s a tennis tournament to-day. Me sitting out in a blame country road in the hot sun all the afternoon. My Lawd! Don’t I wish that old fool’d learn enough to stay home, or go to the city, to the theayters and stores!"