But two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock passed, and no coal wagon backed up to the sidewalk in front, of the Laurences, though a succession of them passed funereally through the white street, _en route_ for more fortunate householders. At a quarter after four she gave a joyful exclamation—one had stopped, at last, opposite her door; but the joy was short-lived—the wagon honked further along, tentatively, until it stopped at Mrs. Spicer’s half-way down the block. In a minute more Mrs. Laurence could see the dark legs of alternate men outlined against the drifts, as they carried buckets of the precious fuel to the opening in the cellar at the side of the Spicer villa. Something seemed to shatter through her—an iconoclastic blast, that she had been striving to shut out. Could Will have possibly forgotten between the house and the station? But no, that could not be! She dressed hastily, in the later stages of her toilet vibrating between the silver-decked dressing-table, and the window, from behind the curtains of which she took recurrent peeps. At her last look she ran hastily down the stairs and opened the front door for Mrs. Stone, who was temporarily garbed in a polo cap and her husband’s spring overcoat, into the pockets of which she had thrust her hands. “I saw you coming along! It’s too cold to be kept waiting on anybody’s door-step. Walk right in, tea will be ready in a moment.” “I thought I’d be sure to find you in now,” said Mrs. Stone comfortably, shedding her masculine apparel in the hall on her way to the drawing-room where she established herself with the ease of custom in a Turkish chair by the gas logs. The Ridge was apt to assemble informally at Mrs. Laurence’s for five o’clock tea; it was known that she really had it whether there was any one there or not; there was always something pleasantly cosy about the little function. Mrs. Stone watched her hostess lazily as she drew the low, china-laden table nearer the fire, and lighted the lamp under the brass kettle just brought in, her dark, graceful head bent over to watch it, and her hands showing very white against the dull red of her gown. “It’s such a relief to get in here,” said the visitor, breaking the silence as she took the steaming cup of fragrant tea offered her, and helped herself to a tiny hot buttered scone, from a blue Canton dish. “They are getting in coal at the Budds’ this morning, and now they’re at it at the Spicers’—the noise nearly sets me crazy, the houses are so near together. O Mrs. Spicer, I didn’t hear you come in!” Mrs. Stone looked up with a start to see another visitor walking, unannounced, into the room, a little woman in a long fur wrap with a lace scarf thrown over her head. “I was just saying—perhaps you heard me—what a noise your coal makes when it’s being put in.”