“Do you want a big tray piled with dishes, as at a hotel or restaurant?” Mrs. Groves asked, and Alex. replied: “Of course not; there is a medium, and I want to save time as well as steps for these girls, who must have been fagged to death. The one who was just here, Fanny, I believe, is her name, was white as a sheet when she dropped her tray. I thought she was going to faint. Evidently she is not used to the work.” There was a call for Alex. from one of the guests, and, with a bow, he walked away, feeling uncomfortable, as he always did when he had made anyone else so; but glad that the interview was over and he had taken the dragon by the horns. Sherry meantime had gone to the summer-house, where she found Nos. 2 and 3 sitting upon the steps, and Polly, lying upon a seat inside, her feet crossed and her hands clasped under her head. “Hello, No. 1,” she said, as Sherry appeared. “You still live, I see. What did she say? Did she give you the bounce?” “No, only a promise of it if I offend again,” Sherry replied, as she took a seat upon the steps and began to inhale deep breaths of the cool air from the hills and to fan herself with her apron. “I was never so dead tired in my life,” Polly began. “I wonder if any of you can guess how far we walked during the dinner. I have a pedometer my brother gave me, and I thought I’d wear it and know. Guess now.” No. 3 said it seemed ten miles, No. 2 twenty, and Sherry fifty, judging from her feelings when she dropped the salad. “All wrong, of course,” Polly said, sitting up and producing the pedometer. “It is six rods from the tables through the long dining-room and anteroom to the supplies in the kitchen,” she said, “and we went forward and back, forward and back, like you do in a cotillion, till we walked nearly two and a half miles,—enough to make a minister swear or sweat this hot day.” “Oh-h!” came simultaneously from the three girls on the steps, each feeling more tired than before, and each thinking with dread of the next day and the miles which lay before her. Naturally there was a discussion with regard to the guests and the Marshes and Alex., whom Polly pronounced “O. K.” She was the slangy one of the quartette, and kept them amused and laughing until the stable clock struck eleven, when they started for the house, which the _chef_ was beginning to shut up. When alone in her room, Sherry stood a long time looking out upon the hills and valley bathed in the moonlight, and listening to the voices in front of the house calling good-night as the guests separated to their rooms. Alex. seemed to be everywhere, and the last Sherry heard he was saying to Charley Reeves, “Good-night, old chap, I hope we shall all have a good time. I mean you shall.” In Alex.’s voice there was a richness and a heartiness which always rang true, and Sherry’s last thought as she fell asleep was, “If all the world were like Mr. Marsh there would be no lack of good times.”