It was little things like these that made Sally's shop unusual and inviting, but Piney started a new venture herself accidentally. She and Sally had always been chums, and now she spent most of her time helping her. It became the order of the day for them to have a cup of tea about four o'clock. Piney would take a candle-stand by the west window and make it look so inviting with a little strip of homespun linen and a spray of flowering almond that no one could resist tea from the old blue ware which Mrs. Peckham had donated. They were just having tea one afternoon when Miss Emery came in with the girls from the Academy in New York. There was Frances, and the two Farley sisters, Gwen and Elise. The other girl was Cecil Fanshawe. Kit had a way of summing up family history with a few brief, terse remarks, and she had all four indexed and filed, so to speak. "Cecil's from Fanshawe Grange, somewhere in Middlesex, England. Father's a Major in France, mother's dead, got two aunts in New York. Gwen and Elise come from Ohio, got French blood from colonial days. Frances is old Knickerbocker stock, born on Washington Square, warranted sterling. I like Cecil best." When they discovered the tea-table that afternoon, Miss Emery insisted that she would not leave until she had partaken also from the willow pattern cups, and Sally, all blushes and smiles, prepared her first guest tea. After they had gone she looked at the seventy-five cents in her hand, as though it had fallen from the sky, but Piney took the cue from Fate. "We will serve afternoon tea here from now on," she said, "and it's going to be twenty cents instead of fifteen. I know what we'll call this place, Sally. There are willow trees all around here, and along the river. This is the 'Sign of the Willow Tree.' We'll make it a stopping-off place for all good pilgrims." CHAPTER XXVII HELENITA'S SONG-BIRD The tenth of July was always a momentous date in Gilead local history. Every year on that day, down in the little church on the Plains, the grand old guard of '83 held their Carberry Reunion. The girls had heard of it first through Cousin Roxy, who had been one of the pupils of Professor Carberry in the old days at the Gayhead schoolhouse. "Land, girls, if we didn't have our reunion every year, we'd begin to feel some of us were growing old," she had said laughingly. "The Professor's class has held that reunion every year since he had to give up the school in '89. There are a few empty places with the coming around of each July, but I guess we'll keep on holding them as long as the Professor holds out."