There wouldn't have been an end of it, though, if Miss Rothermel had not got up and walked away. There is a limit beyond which even American Farmers' Daughters must not be permitted to go, and Goneril had certainly reached that limit, and as she would have talked on for an hour in steadily increasing vehemence, there was nothing but for Missy to go away, with silent disapprobation, and wish the visitor well out of the house. The visitor she found at the breakfast-table, blandly stirring her weak tea, and waiting for her oatmeal to have an additional fifteen minutes on the fire. The cook had been called in and acknowledged that the oatmeal had only had two hours of cooking. Mrs. Smatter had explained, on exact scientific principles, the necessity of boiling oatmeal two hours and thirty-five minutes, and the wheels of breakfast stood still while this was being accomplished. The cook was in a rage, for oatmeal was one of her strong points, and she always boiled it two hours. Miss Varian was growing distrustful of everything. Mrs. Smatter had raised her suspicions about the adulteration of all the food on the table. Even the water, she found, wasn't filtered with the proper filter, and there was salt enough in the potatoes to destroy the tissues of a whole household. She desired the waitress to have a pitcher of water boiled for her, and then iced; and she would be glad if she would ask the grocer where he got his salt. By dinner time Miss Varian's usual good appetite was destroyed; she was so engaged in speculating about the assimilation of her food, that she had a bad indigestion. When evening came, she was so fretful she was almost inclined to quarrel with her new-found friend. As they sat around the lamp, Mrs. Smatter became a little restless because the conversation showed a tendency to degenerate into domestic or commonplace channels; she strove to buoy it up with æsthetic, speculative, scientific bladders, as the case might be. Missy pricked one or two of these, by asking some question which wasn't in Mrs. Smatter's catechism; but, nothing daunted, she would inflate another, and go sailing on to the admiration of her hearers. A letter had come from St. John, in which he gave some hope that he might return in the autumn, though he entered into no explanation of the reason for such a change of plan. Missy was all curiosity, and her mother was all solicitude, but they naturally did not talk much to each other about it, and of course did not wish it alluded to in Mrs. Smatter's presence. Miss Varian, however, asked questions, and brought the subject forward with persistence. It seemed to Miss Rothermel profanation to have her brother's name spoken by this woman. What was her dismay to hear Mrs. Smatter say, settling herself into a speculative attitude: