Rachel Redding was not available upon this Saturday morning. Her mother had been taken seriously ill the night before, and Rachel had sent word that she could not leave her. Juliet had not minded much, although it was a day when Rachel's help would have been especially acceptable. As it was, she had reached a point where her housewifely marshalling of the day's work was at a critical stage. A cake had been put into the oven. A large bowl of soup stock had been brought from a cool retreat to have the smooth coating of fat removed from its surface. Various other dishes, in process of construction, awaited the skilled touch of the cook. "I shall have to do them, I suppose," said Mrs. Robeson to herself, regarding the strawberries with a disapproving eye. "But _why_ they had to come to-day----" She went at the strawberries, wishing she had ordered less. They were fine berries--on top; by degrees, as the boxes lowered, they became less fine. It seemed desirable to separate the superior from the inferior and treat them differently. Only the best would do for the delectable preserve which was to go into glasses and be served on special occasions; the others could be made into jam less attractive to the eye if hardly less acceptable to the palate. Juliet was obliged to put down her berry-boxes every fifth minute to attend to one or other of the various saucepans and double-boilers upon the little range. Her cheeks grew flushed, for the day was hot and the kitchen hotter. It must be admitted that her occasional glance out over the green fields and the woods beyond was a longing one. The better selection of the berries went into the clear syrup in the preserving-kettle. Juliet flew to get her glass pots ready. She stopped to stir something in a saucepan. She thrust some eggs into the small ice-chest to cool them for the salad dressing soon to be made. She kept one eye on the clock, for the strawberry preserve had to be timed to a minute--ten, no more, no less. It was a strenuous hour. As she dipped up the fourth ladleful of crimson richness--translucent as a church window--and filled the waiting jar, a peculiar pungent odour drifted across the fragrance of the strawberries. Juliet dropped her ladle and pulled open the oven door. The delicate cake which she had compounded with especial care because it was Mrs. Dingley's favourite, lay a blackened ruin. Some of it had run over upon the oven bottom and become a mass of cinders. Juliet jerked the cake-tin out into the daylight and shut the oven door with a slam. It was at this unpropitious moment that a figure appeared in the doorway--a tall, slim figure, in crisp, cool, white linen. A charming white hat surmounted Mrs. Wayne Carey's carefully ordered hair, a white parasol in her hands completed a particularly chaste and appropriate morning toilette for a young woman who had nothing to do with kitchens.