There was an awkward, rambling attempt at talk. But we had nothing to talk about--nothing in common. I happened to think of our not having brought Margot; how shameful it was, yet how glad I felt, and how self-contemptuous for being glad. To break that awful silence I enlarged upon Margot--her beauty, her cleverness. “She must be like Polly”--my sister’s name was Polly--“like Polly was at her age,” observed my mother. I looked at Polly Ann, in whose faded face and withered form--faded and withered though she was not yet forty, was in fact but seven or eight years older than I. Like Polly! I could speak no more of Margot, the delicate loveliness of a rare, carefully reared hot-house exotic. Yes, exotic; for the girls and the women brought up in the super-refinements of prosperous class silliness seem foreign to this world--and are. A few minutes that seemed hours, and Edna came in, her father and mother limping and hobbling in her train. Edna was sickly pale and her eyelids refused to rise. I shook hands with old Willie Wheatlands, hesitated, then kissed the fat, sallow, swinging cheek of my mother-in-law. Said Edna in a hard, forced voice: “I’ve explained that Margot isn’t well and that we’ve got to get back----” “Mercy me!” cried my mother. “Ain’t you going to stay to supper?” Supper! It was only half-past twelve. Supper could not be until five or half-past. We had been there half an hour and already conversation was exhausted and time had become motionless. “We intended to,” said Edna. “But Margot wasn’t at all well when we left. We simply can’t stay away long. We’d not have come, but we felt we’d never get here if we kept on letting things interfere.” “You didn’t leave Margy _alone_?” demanded Edna’s mother. “Almost,” said Edna. “Only a--a servant.” “Oh, you keep a nurse girl, too,” said Polly. “I thought Edna didn’t look as if she did any of her own work.” “Yes, I have a--a girl, in addition to the cook,” replied Edna, flushing as she thus denied three of her five servants--flushing not because of the denial, but because in her confession she had almost forgotten about the numerous excuses based on the cook. “Godfrey has been doing very well, and we felt we could afford it.” “Better get rid of her,” advised old Willie sourly. “And of the cook, too. Servant girls is mighty wasteful.” “And she’ll teach Margy badness,” said my mother. “Them servants is full of poison. Even if yer pa’d had money I’d never have allowed no servant round my children, no more’n a snake in the cradle. I hope she’s a good Christian, and not a Catholic?” “She’s all right,” declared Edna nervously. “But we’ll have to be going soon.” “Yes; that there girl might git drunk,” said Mrs. Wheatlands. “And set fire to the house maybe,” said my mother. “I heard of a case just last week.” “I wish you hadn’t said that,” cried Edna, her tones of protest more like jubilation. “I’ll be wretched until I’m home again.”