"I've planned noon lunch for 'em," Calliope told me; "I'm goin' to see to the meat--leg o' lamb, sissin' hot, an' a big bowl o' mint. Mis' Holcomb's got to freeze a freezer o' her lemon ice--she gets it smooth as a mud pie. Mis' Toplady, she'll come in on the baked stuff--raised rolls an' a big devil's food. An'--I'd kind o' meant to look to you for the salad, but I s'pose you won't want to bother now...." And when I had hastened to assume the salad, "Well, I _am_ glad," she owned, with a relieved sigh. "The Proudfit salads they can't a soul tell what ingredients is in 'em, chew high though we may. I know you know about them queer organs an' canned sea reptiles they use now in cookin'. I've come to the solemn conclusion I ain't studied physiology an' the animal sciences close enough myself to make a rill up-to-date salad." Before noon we were all at Proudfit House--to which I had taken care to leave word for Abel to follow me--and we were letting in the sun, making ready the table, filling the vases with garden roses; and in the library Calliope laid a fire "in case they get chilly, travellin' so," she said, but I think rather it was in longing somehow to summon a secret agency to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its vines and its climbing rose and its canaries:-- "I marvel, I _marvel_ at your bad taste. How can you leave the dear place and the dear people for me?" I love to recall the bustle of that arriving and how, as the motor came up the drive, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and Mis' Amanda ran down on the gravel and waved their aprons; and how Mis' Postmaster Sykes and Mis' Mayor Uppers and Mis' Photographer Sturgis, having heard the machine pass their doors, had issued forth and followed it and arrived at the Proudfits' with: "I was right in the midst of a basque, cuttin' over an old lining, but I told Liddy Ember: 'You rip on. I've _got_ to run over.' Excuse my looks. Well said! Back!" And, "Got here, did you? My, my, all tired out, I expect. Well, mebbe you think we won't feel relieved to see the house open again an' folks in it flyin' round. An' you look as natural as the first thunder-storm in the spring o' the year!" And, "Every day for two weeks," Mis' Sturgis said, "I've said to Jimmy: 'Proudfits back?' 'No, sir,' s'he, 'not back yet.' An' so it went. Could you sleep any on the sleeper?"