"I'll be good," promised Henrietta, comically, "in spite of them; but you see, girls, with such a pair of relatives dogging my footsteps, it's uphill work." After a little more conversation, the girls rose to depart. Mrs. Slater begged them to come again. She said that she enjoyed young people. Then the big front door was closed behind them and the dreaded visit was over. "So," said Marjory, "_that's_ what Mrs. Slater is like inside." Mabel, unable to bear them longer, was recklessly peeling off her lemon-colored gloves. "She's lovely, inside and out," declared Bettie, "but I never dreamed that she was like _that_." "She wouldn't have cared if I _had_ gone without gloves," mourned aggrieved Mabel. "I'd like to pay Henrietta back for _that_." "Girls," asked Marjory, "do you _like_ Henrietta?" "I adore her," declared Jean. "I _think_ I like her," said Bettie. "I know _I_ don't," asserted Mabel, waving her throbbing hands in the evening breeze to cool them. "I do and I don't," said Marjory. "I admire her, but she makes me uncomfortable. I feel as if she were just playing with me." "She seems more than fourteen," murmured Jean, dreamily. "That's because she's traveled so much," explained Bettie. "She's like the big opal in Mother's ring," mused imaginative Jean. "One moment all warm and sparkly, the next, all cold and quiet." "And you never know," supplemented Marjory, "which way it's going to be." "I like folks that are downright bad or good," said Mabel, crossly. "Burglars ought to be burglars and ministers ought to be ministers and they all ought to be marked so you can tell 'em apart; else, how are you going to?" CHAPTER XX The Call Returned THE following Saturday, the girls carried their Christmas sewing to Jean's. The sewing had not reached a very exciting stage, so tongues moved faster than fingers. Mabel was still working on a shoe-bag for her father but, owing to some misadventure, one of the two compartments was several sizes larger than the other. Mabel regarded this difference with disapproval until comforting Jean came to the rescue. "Perhaps," suggested Jean, "there's a difference in the size of your father's feet." "Oh, there is," cried Mabel, gleefully. "His right shoe is always tighter than the left." "But," objected quick-witted Marjory, "it isn't his feet that are going into that bag. It's his shoes, and they're the same size." "Oh," groaned Mabel, settling into a disconsolate heap, "that's so." "Never mind," said Bettie. "Give me the bag, and I'll fix those pockets." Bettie was embroidering an elaborate pincushion for her mother, but she stopped so often to help the others that there seemed small hope of its ever getting finished. Marjory, who was making one just like it for her Aunty Jane, was progressing much more rapidly. Jean, rummaging in her work-bag, was trying to decide which of four partly completed articles to sew on when a carriage stopped at Mrs. Mapes's gate.