Lili's delays in coming to be paid had been such that the Marches now tried to pay her when she brought their breakfast, but they sometimes forgot, and then they caught her whenever she came near them. In this event she liked to coquet with their impatience; she would lean against their table, and say: "Oh, no. You stay a little. It is so nice." One day after such an entreaty, she said, "The queen is here, this morning." Mrs. March started, in the hope of highhotes. "The queen!" "Yes; the young lady. Mr. Burnamy was saying she was a queen. She is there with her father." She nodded in the direction of a distant corner, and the Marches knew that she meant Miss Triscoe and the general. "She is not seeming so gayly as she was being." March smiled. "We are none of us so gayly as we were being, Lili. The summer is going." "But Mr. Burnamy will be returning, not true?" the girl asked, resting her tray on the corner of the table. "No, I'm afraid he won't," March returned sadly. "He was very good. He was paying the proprietor for the dishes that Augusta did break when she was falling down. He was paying before he went away, when he was knowing that the proprietor would make Augusta to pay." "Ah!" said March, and his wife said, "That was like him!" and she eagerly explained to Mrs. Adding how good and great Burnamy had been in this characteristic instance, while Lili waited with the tray to add some pathetic facts about Augusta's poverty and gratitude. "I think Miss Triscoe ought to know it. There goes the wretch, now!" she broke off. "Don't look at him!" She set her husband the example of averting his face from the sight of Stoller sullenly pacing up the middle aisle of the grove, and looking to the right and left for a vacant table. "Ugh! I hope he won't be able to find a single place." Mrs. Adding gave one of her pealing laughs, while Rose watched March's face with grave sympathy. "He certainly doesn't deserve one. Don't let us keep you from offering Miss Triscoe any consolation you can." They got up, and the boy gathered up the gloves, umbrella, and handkerchief which the ladies let drop from their laps. "Have you been telling?" March asked his wife. "Have I told you anything?" she demanded of Mrs. Adding in turn. "Anything that you didn't as good as know, already?" "Not a syllable!" Mrs. Adding replied in high delight. "Come, Rose!" "Well, I suppose there's no use saying anything," said March, after she left them. "She had guessed everything, without my telling her," said his wife. "About Stoller?" "Well-no. I did tell her that part, but that was nothing. It was about Burnamy and Agatha that she knew. She saw it from the first." "I should have thought she would have enough to do to look after poor old Kenby." "I'm not sure, after all, that she cares for him. If she doesn't, she oughtn't to let him write to her. Aren't you going over to speak to the Triscoes?"