The Applebys had no delicately adjusted rule about the thickness of bread in sandwiches. Sometimes Mother was moved to make them very dainty, very thin and trim. But now, because he was in such a fever to please the Carters, Father fairly slashed their last loaf of bread, and slapped in the lettuce, while Mother was drawing tea. In two minutes he was proudly entering with the service-tray. He set it down before the Carters; he fussed with a crumb on the table-cloth, with the rather faded crimson rambler in the ornate pressed-glass vase. Mrs. Carter glanced at him impatiently. He realized that he was being officious, and rushed away. Mother was sitting by the wide kitchen table, which was scarred with generations of use of cleaver and bread-knife and steak-pounder. The kitchen door was open to the broad land, which flowed up to the sill in a pleasant sea of waving grass. But she was turned from it, staring apprehensively toward the tea-room. Round her swirled the heat from the stove, and restless flies lighted on her cheek and flew off at hectic tangents. Father tiptoed up to her, smiling. "I've left the door open wide enough so you can see them," he whispered. "Come and take a look at them. Mrs. Vance Carter--gee! And her daughter's a mighty pretty girl--not that I think much of these blouses that are cut so low and all." "Oh, I wouldn't dare--" Mother stopped short. Quiet as they were, they could distinctly hear the voices from the other room. The Carter girl--she who was known as "Pig Carter" at Miss Severance's school--was snapping, "What in the world ever made you come to this frightful hole, mama?" "Simply because I wanted to stop some place, and I really can't stand that mincing Miss Mitchin and her half-baked yearners and that odious creature with the beard and the ballet skirt, again." "At least Mitchin's shop is better than this awful place. Why, this might be one of those railroad lunch-rooms you see from a train." "I'm not so sure this really is worse than the Mitchin creature's zoo, Marky. At least this is a perfect study in what not to do. I fancy it would be a good thing for every interior decorator to come here and learn what to avoid. And, you know, they really might have done something with this place--rather a decent old house, with a good plain fireplace. But then, any one could make a charming room, and only a genius could have imagined this combination--an oak dining-room chair with a wicker table and a cotton table-cloth. I'm sure that Exhibition of Bad Taste--wasn't it? I don't pore over the newspapers as you do--that they held in New York would have been charmed to secure that picture of the kittens and the infant." All this, conveyed in the Carters' clear, high-bred voices, Father and Mother heard perfectly.... The picture of kittens and a baby they had bought just after Lulu's birth, and it had always hung above the couch in their living-room in New York.