When Mrs. Coates stepped from the buggy and came up the three steps, Marjory’s feelings were mingled of relief and disappointment, for the lady wore a plain skirt and coat of tan linen, and a very simple hat of brown straw; so that the poor little hostess, in her trailing skirts and high-wired collar, felt overdressed to the verge of rudeness. The greetings being over, Mrs. Coates pleaded the heat of the cars and the warning of a headache as an excuse for staying under the shade rather than driving, and so they went to the side piazza, and began a conversation that was made up largely of words wherein quantity took the place of vital interest. Mrs. Coates’s almost affectionate manner in greeting Marjory was gradually losing its spontaneity; her husband had said, when she proposed going to visit the Kents: “I want your judgment, my dear; I’m thinking of taking Kent into the firm. As a man he’s all right, and he’s full of praise for his wife and her inexpensive tastes; but I want _you_ to judge his wife before making the partnership proposition, for the woman is usually the pacemaker of the pair, and if she’s the sort to try and splutter all over the surface of society with a flash like fat that’s jumped out of a frying-pan, it will not be good for either Kent or my business.” So Mrs. Coates was observing, and she in her turn was beginning to be disappointed, for nothing could be more unlike her real self than Marjory was that morning. “Luncheon is served,” called rather than announced Sapphira, with the air of a theatrical novice who has heretofore merely brought in a card on a tray and is given her first lines, which are, “The Prince has arrived,” and the break gave both women a feeling of relief. Mrs. Coates turned and looked expectantly about the veranda, for Billy had dwelt so much about the charm of their meals out-of-doors; but as Marjory led the way into the shadowy dining room, where the two maids stood motionless, she blinked once or twice, until she had taken in all the surroundings, and then seated herself with a feeling somehow of having been the victim of a hoax. The table and room were both correct and charming, but so much like the hundreds of others at which she had sat in houses both public and private for many years, that she could almost tell with her eyes closed the rotation of the dishes of the menu, from the little-neck clams to the green mint frappé. She had dared to think that there was a young woman who had stepped out of the flock of sheep, not only because they ran too fast, but because she preferred not to flock. Well, it was merely another shattered delusion; also knowing the Kents’ income to a penny, she frowned on _two_ waiting-maids.