Milly came to greet us cordially enough, then excused herself to oversee preparations for her dinner in the kitchen. Nathan led us into the living room. Through the archway into the dining room I could not help noting a profusion of white linen, silver, cut glass and flowers. But the savor of the forthcoming meal was strong through the house, along with something which has scorched acridly. To close the door between dining room and kitchen never occurred to Milly. It was her house, wasn’t it? What did a door or two matter? From my position at table when we were subsequently placed, I sat throughout the meal with a kitchen vista before me in a chaotic mass of pots, pans, kettles and paper bags, all but the bags greasy and sooty and piled in the sink in plain sight over Milly’s shoulder. In the interval before dinner, however, regardless of the fact that we were ostensibly there to visit her parents, little Mary assumed that it devolved upon her to entertain us. Which she did in all childish innocence and utter good intention, but which became quickly embarrassing even to the point of wholesome exasperation. We had not been in the place four minutes before she dug up dolls, doll carriages, toy houses and games and insisted that we interest ourselves in all of them. Again and again Nathan reprimanded her or sent her out. Back she would come in a moment with the utmost self-assurance. “Mamma says I can!” she explained to her father each time and finally shoved a primer in my face with the persistent demand, did I want to hear her read? Now I like youngsters and so does Mary Ann. But God knows there’s a time and place for everything, even children. And little Mary soon got on my nerves. Nathan tried to “save his face” and send her out as patiently and kindly as he could. But Mary continued to run appealing to her mother and demanded to know if “Uncle Billy couldn’t hear her read?” and I overheard Milly retort “Certainly!” as though astonished that any one might not want to hear a first-grade reading lesson as prelude to a five-course dinner. So back came Mary, poked up into my arms, conveyed kitchen flour all over my clothes and started to out-talk her father with such asinine twaddle as, “I see a cat. Can the cat run? Yes, the cat can run. It is a black cat. Oh, see the pretty kittens.” Etc., etc., etc. Nathan colored, grew grim of lip, ordered the child from the room in no mild tone. And little Mary started for the kitchen with a sudden, high-pitched, heartbroken bawl. In the kitchen she stayed permanently this time, to bounce back a few moments later, loll at the corner of the doorway and announce: