"He don't, because he don't dare; but there's no question what he means. He's bringing the señora. And he wouldn't bring her if it wasn't that he's going to marry her. Even you must see that. And if there was ever a insult multiplied by perjury, Jathrop's done it in that action. It's a good thing he didn't ask: 'How's Susan Clegg?' this time, as he did the time he was coming back from the Klondike. For I don't believe I could ever have stood that. All I can say, Mrs. Lathrop, is as I'm sorry for you from the soles of my feet up. You'll never in the world be able to get up a Christmas dinner as will please any señora, you can take my word on that. And not to please her will be a bad beginning with a señora as is to be your future daughter-in-law. Señoras don't care shucks for turkey and mince pie. They're not used to 'em and likely to get indigestion from 'em, and think what it would mean to Jathrop, let alone to her, if she should be carried off by a acute attack right here in your new, built-over house, at the dinner table. He'd blame it on you, and like as not she'd haunt you the rest of your living days. No, sir. You've got to give her Spanish omelets with lots of red peppers in 'em, and everything else Creole style, which means all he't up with tabasco sauce fit to burn out your insides. It's eating like that as makes those Spaniards and Cubans so dark colored you can't tell 'em from mulattoes. The peppers and the tabasco sauce bakes 'em brown on the outside, after leaving 'em all scorched and parched within." For once, however, Susan Clegg was wrong in her deduction. Jathrop arrived in a red automobile on the day before Christmas, with a chauffeur in bear-skins driving, and a guest in sealskin beside him. But the guest was not the señora. It was one of Jathrop's millionaire friends who, Jathrop said, could buy and sell him twenty times over. He was a small man with a bald head and a red beard and old enough to be Jathrop's father. Miss Clegg viewed the arrival from her bedroom window and was so glad it wasn't the señora that she at once set about baking extra doughnuts and mince pie to contribute to the festivities of the morrow. This occupied her until supper time. Then she made a hurried meal, washed her one plate and cup and saucer, and loaded down with her thank offering, flitted through the pergola and in at Mrs. Lathrop's kitchen door. The kitchen was empty, but voices penetrating from the dining room told her that her friend and her visitors were still at table. Being a trifle nervous and unable to sit quietly, she began at once to put the disordered kitchen into some degree of order, purely for the sake of occupation.