“The kettle was just boiling, and its likely that Kate Gorman is drawing the tea now—Oolong of the very best. Smith, you do not suppose I should offer Mrs. Carter anything less?” “Champagne,” answered Smith, throwing out his chest with a swell of hospitable importance, “on ice and plenty of it. I’m astonished at you, Mrs. Smith; that you did not think of it.” “But I—I didn’t think; I didn’t know as you’d like us to break into a basket,” cried Mrs. Smith, so eager to exculpate herself, that she grew red in the face. “As if we didn’t break into baskets every day of our lives,” answered the grocer, looking severely at his wife. Then turning toward his guest, he observed that Mrs. Smith, he was sorry to say, didn’t meet prosperity with the air and grace that must make his friend Carter proud of the wife he had married, who seemed capable of filling any position. “Oh, Smith!” pleaded the hostess, with tears in her eyes, “sometimes I think you don’t care how much you hurt my feelings!” “But he don’t mean it,” interposed Mrs. Carter, “it’s all because he wants to be hospitable.” Here the good woman drew a deep breath and flushed happily, feeling that she had at last matched her host in elaborate English. “But there is no need of it. I’m just sick and tired of champagne. A good cup of tea is worth a dozen bottles, and here it comes steaming hot.” “In that Britannia tea-pot, too,” muttered Smith, “as if we had no silver in the house!” “I’m sure the spoons are all here, they were counted only this morning.” Smith, for secret reasons of his own, did not press the question of silver, and a cry from the next room saved him from the necessity. “That child shrieking like mad again—upon my word, Mrs. Smith, we must discharge the nurse. She is really incompus—that is, incomp——” Fortunately for the grocer, who never could have fought his way through the word he was toiling at, Jerusha Maria renewed her shrieks with appalling vigor, and Mrs. Smith rushed into the next room. James had been doing his best to appease the infant’s wrath, which had been kindled by his persistent refusal to let her run her hand into the round holes which Kate Gorman had left open in the stove, when she took the tea kettle off. A dive into the red hot coals underneath had been ruthlessly frustrated; hence the shrieks of rage which had brought the mother into the midst of the fray. Goaded out of her usual good-temper before, she flamed up furiously now, snatching the young lady from the hold James was striving desperately to keep upon her. Mrs. Smith turned upon him. “Do you want to kill the child before my eyes?” she demanded, pulling down Jerusha Maria’s frock with a jerk, “as if I hadn’t trouble enough without you setting in!” Before the lad could answer, or attempt to defend himself, Mrs. Smith sailed out of the room, smothering the child’s wrath by a fiercer embrace than she was conscious of.