It was upon this that Rose and Phil came in from the kitchen. Rose was taller than her sister, a slender, handsome woman, with an air of distinction which dishwashing in no wise abated. She was one of those American women who wear an apron like a vestment--who, the _vestis domestica_ flung aside, adorn the parlor as charmingly as they grace the kitchen. Phil began to whistle a tune, which Rose tried to identify for her by striking the chords. "What are you two talking about?" asked Phil, turning from the piano. "Discussing the origin of the pyramids," replied Nan, rising. "You and Rose must have settled something in all the time you took to the dishes. It was a noisy session, too. You must have been playing drop the teacup." Phil clasped her hands dramatically, reciting:-- "A moment then, She poised upon the dishpan's utmost verge The heirloom teapot old, with flowers bedight. And with a cry--" She paused, feigning forgetfulness. Her father rose quickly and caught up the imaginary fragment:-- "And with a cry As when some greedy wight, on porridge keen, Gulps it, and bawleth loud to find it hot,-- Screams for the cook and tuggeth at his sword--" "Familiar," observed Rose dreamily from the piano. "Is it 'Pelleas and Etarre' or 'The Passing of Arthur'?" "Nope. 'The Bold Buccaneer,' by the Honest Iceman of Mazoopa," answered Phil. "And here he is now," said Nan as the front door boomed and rattled. There was no bell at the Bartletts': but from the door hung a bass-drumstick, with which visitors were expected to thump. This had been a part of the equipment of a local band that had retired from business. In the dispersion of its instruments the drum had reached a second-hand store. Nan, with a keen eye for such chances, had bought and dismantled the drum, and used the frame as a stockade for fresh chirpers from her incubator. The drumstick seemed to have been predestined of all time to serve as a knocker. "It's Amy. I told him to come," said Phil. Her father's face fell almost imperceptibly. The company was complete as it was and much as he liked Amzi he resented his appearance at this hour. Rose went to the door. "It may be Judge Walters. He's been trying to get over for some time to talk about that new book on hypnotism," said Nan. It proved, however, to be Amzi. They heard him telling Rose in the entry that he was just passing and thought he would drop in. "That will do for that, Amy," called Phil. "You told me you were coming." "I told you nothing of the kind!" blustered Amzi. "Then, sir, you didn't; you _did not_!" Amzi glared at them all fiercely. His cherubic countenance was so benevolent, the kind eyes behind his spectacles so completely annulled his ferocity, that his assumed fierceness was absurd.