"I do. But I've got a date with my girl friend to go to the movie first." She grinned at the stately white-haired companion of her revels and the two giggled like school girls. Jeannette's rollicking peasant humour appealed to Mrs. Payson. She seemed to draw new life from the abounding health and spirits of Jeannette. They had eaten their dessert. In another moment they would leave the table. Jeannette and Mrs. Payson would get their wraps and clank off in the old electric toward the Arcadia. Lottie sat back in her chair and gave a little indrawn gasp like a swimmer who plunges into icy water. "I had my first inoculation to-day, and my vaccination." The minds of the three other women at the table, busy with their own small projects, refused to grasp the meaning of this statement thrust so suddenly upon them. "Vaccination?" Mrs. Payson had caught this one familiar word and now held it dully, awaiting an explanation. "I'm going to France two weeks from to-day," said Lottie. She braced herself, one hand clutching her napkin tight as if that would sustain her. But there was no storm. Not yet. Mrs. Carrie Payson's will refused to accept the message that her ears had flashed to her brain. "Don't be silly, Lottie," she said. She brushed a cooky crumb from the front of her waist. Lottie leaned forward. "Mama, don't you understand? I'm going to France. I'm going in two weeks. I've signed. It's all arranged. I'm going. In two weeks." "Oh golly!" cried Jeannette, "how perfectly grand!" Aunt Charlotte's hand was weaving nervous palsied circles on the tablecloth, round and round. She champed her teeth as always when she was terribly excited. But Mrs. Payson sat suddenly waxen and yellow. You saw odd lines etched in her face that had not been there a moment before. She stared at Lottie. The whites of her eyes showed below the iris. "This is a stroke," Lottie said to herself in a moment of hideous detachment. "She's going to have a stroke, and I've done it." The red surged up into Mrs. Payson's face. "Well, you're not going, that's all. You're not going." "Yes I am, mama," Lottie said then, quietly. "And I say you won't. France! What for! What for!" Aunt Charlotte stood up, her face working, her head shaking. She pointed a lean aspen finger at her sister. "Carrie Thrift, don't you stand in the way of her going. Don't you! Don't you!" Even then Mrs. Payson's middle-class horror of being overheard by the servant in the kitchen triumphed over her anger. "Come on into the sitting room. I'm not going to have that girl listening." She went to the swinging door. "We're through, Liela. You can clear off." She eyed the girl sharply before the door swung back. They marched into the sitting room in silence.