"You _must_ brace up, Flora," she said; "you haven't half dusted the legs of the table! I don't want Mr. Maitland to think we are not good housekeepers, just because we are 'New Women,' you and I!" But Flora did not brighten. She had telephoned the "reg'ler invitation to the movies" before leaving Payton Street, but the "friend" had only said (she told Frederica) "he'd see 'bout it. He'll write to me, and I'll git it Monday," she said. But it was evident that she had very little hope of an acceptance. All that pleasant, hazy Sunday Frederica followed the old, old example of her grandmother, the cave-dweller, and decked her little shelter. She went into the woods and brought back an armful of maple leaves and, with Flora's melancholy assistance, fastened them against the walls and over the doors, hiding, to some extent, the frieze of fans and the yellow pennons of the Cause. She even took down the muslin curtains and washed and ironed them herself, and put them up again, crisp and dainty. The little room bloomed with her joy. When she sat down to "polish" her article she kept jumping up every few minutes to move a bowl of flowers, or put an extra book on the mantelpiece. "I wonder," she thought, "if he can read the titles from that morris chair?" She had decided in what chair he was to sit. She tried the visual possibilities of the chair herself and, by screwing up her eyes, found she could just make out the appallingly learned names on the backs of some of the books. "_That_ will show him what I'm up to!" she said. It was the old Life Purpose--the eternal invitation! The bird preens itself, the flower pours its perfume, the girl's cheek curves like a shell. A man can almost always see the beckoning of that rosy curve, or of a little curl nestling at the back of a white neck, or of soft, shy eyes; for so, in all the ages, Life has invited. But it has never beckoned with a German treatise! Frederica, giving Zip a lump of sugar and making a solitary cup of tea for herself, did not know that she was beckoning.... When, at five o'clock, a motor came chugging along the road, and Arthur Weston opened the door and demanded tea, he, at least, felt the invitation--which was not for him. The white curtains, the open piano, the warmth and fragrance and pleasantness, and, most of all, Frederica, sitting on a little stool by the fire, her face sparkling with welcome. Everything was beckoning! Standing up, warming his hands at the fire while Fred ran out to the kitchen to make fresh tea for him, the caller read the names of the books lined up in a row between the lighted candles on the mantelpiece, and whistled. "Is this your light reading?" he said, as she came back with the cream-pitcher. "For Heaven's sake, lay in some funny papers for the simple male mind!" Then he pulled Zip's ears, took his tea, and said he wished he could ever get enough sugar. "I saw Maitland on Thursday," he said, reaching for another lump. "Yes, he is on deck," Fred said.