Ten minutes after Mary Chavah had left her house, every window was lighted, a fire was kindled in the parlour, and neighbours came from the dark and fell to work at the baskets they had brought. It was marvelous what homely cheer arose. The dining-room table, stretched at its fullest length and white-covered, was various with the yellow and red of fruit and salads, the golden brown of cake and rolls, and the mosaic of dishes. The fire roared in the flat-topped stove on whose "wings" covered pans waited, and everywhere was that happy stir and touch and lift, that note of preparation which informs a time as sunshine or music will strike its key. "My land, the oven--the warming oven. Mary ain't got one. However will we keep the stuff hot?" Mis' Winslow demanded. "What time is it?" "We'd ought to had my big coffee-pot. We'd ought to set two going. I donno why I didn't think of it," Mis' Moran grieved. "Well," said Mis' Mortimer Bates, "when the men get here--if they ever _do_ get here--we'll send one of 'em off somewheres for the truck we forgot. What time is it?" "Here comes a whole cartload of folks," Mis' Moran announced. "I hope and pray they've got the oysters--they'd ought to be popped in the baking oven a minute. What time did you say it is?" "It's twenty minutes past seven," Mis' Winslow said, pushing her hair straight back, regardless of its part, "and we ain't ready within 'leven hundred miles." "Well, if they only all get here," Mis' Bates said, ringing golden and white stuffed eggs on Mary's blue platter; "it's their all being here when she gets here that I want. I ain't worried about the supper--much." "The road's black with folks," Mis' Moran went on. "I'm so _deadly_ afraid I didn't make enough sandwiches. Oh, I donno why it wasn't given me to make more, I'm sure." "Who's seeing to them in the parlour? Who's getting their baskets out here? Where they finding a place for their wraps? Who's lighting the rest of the lamps? What time is it?" demanded Mis' Winslow, cutting her cakes. "Oh," said Mis' Bates from a cloud of brown butter about the cooking stove, "I donno whether we've done right. I donno but we've broke our word to the Christmas paper. I donno whether we ain't going to get ourselves criticized for this as never folks was criticized before." Mis' Moran changed her chair to the draughtless corner back of the cooking stove and offered to stir the savoury saucepan. "I know it," she said, "I know it. We never planned much in the first start. It grew and it grew like it grew with its own bones. But mebbe there's some won't believe that, one secunt." Mis' Winslow straightened up from the table and held out a hand with fingers frosting-tipped. "Well," she said, with a great period, "if we _have_ broke our word to the Christmas paper, I'd rather stand up here with my word broke this way than with it kept so good it hurt me. Is it half-past seven yet?"