“Is everything all right with you at your house?” “Slick. I wish you’d come and live with me, now, Ellen. I’d make you my housekeeper and after a bit I’d like to tell Cecily you’re a cousin of mine. This seems so queer.” “Better not. No, I won’t leave Mrs. Harrison. Help’s hard to get. She counts on me, and I love the babies.” “Good old Ellen.” “Not a bit. I like it here. It’s very homey.” “Don’t you think my house would be homey?” Ellen looked at her dubiously and let that pass. “Well, if you prefer the highly charged domesticity of this place to me and my Matthew, it’s up to you.” Dick came out, seeking cocktails. “I’m getting a drink and flirting with Ellen,” said Fliss. “You’re probably trying to get Ellen away from us,” laughed Dick, “but I warn you that she won’t go. It’s been tried.” It was only natural that Ellen should take an interest in the table conversation. She answered the bell herself, for the housemaid had cut her hand a few days before and, deliberately or otherwise, was retaining her clumsy bandages. It was obvious even to a listener so utterly untrained as Ellen that the old free give-and-take of the quartet was gone. They laughed just as much, gossiped as interestedly and haggled over their bits of philosophy as eagerly. Yet one could see that in these bits of philosophy, especially when they touched or seemed to touch upon habits of living, Cecily seemed to make an appeal to Matthew and Fliss to Dick. Ellen was very thoughtful as she washed her dishes, which the housemaid dried superciliously. “Isn’t that Mrs. Allenby the prettiest thing you ever saw?” asked the housemaid. “Not as pretty as Mrs. Harrison,” said Ellen, “but she’s very nice looking.” “Well, Mrs. Harrison has looks all right--style, too, in a way, by which I mean she has nice things and expensive things--but to my way of thinking,” expounded Jenny, “she’s not in it with Mrs. Allenby for real class. Now, Mrs. Allenby knows how to dress. She’s an awful swell too. My goodness, you see her name everywhere. She’s the very center of that Country Club set.” Jenny had waited on table at the Country Club during the summer months and made fine distinctions. “The men,” she went on, not at all disturbed by Ellen’s silence, “just flock around her. She livens things up so. Why, just think of the way she livened up that dining-room to-night. She knows how to put some pep into things. Everybody’s crazy about her. I wonder she can put up with a stupid little home dinner like this.” Ellen chuckled at the marvelous reversals of standards. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, with a fairly good imitation of sarcasm, “maybe she wasn’t used to much before she married.” Jenny cocked an elbow. “Used to much? That girl’s been a _débutante_, you can just be sure of that. She’s got a real aristocratic manner. You don’t appreciate standards like that, being from the country yourself, but to a town girl there’s no mistaking.” “Don’t bang those cups.”