Were curtains, then, so important that one might neither call nor be called on without them? What other possible explanation could there be? Perhaps Mary Elizabeth’s mother had no curtains and that was why our mothers did not know her. “Mary Elizabeth is going to help do the work for the New Family, and live there,” I said at last. “Won’t it be nice to have her to play with?” “You must be very kind to her,” somebody said. “_Kind to her!_” It was my first horrified look into the depths of the social condescensions. _Kind to her_--when I remembered what we shared! I thought of saying hotly that she was my best friend. But I was silent. There was, after all, no way to make anybody understand what had opened to me that morning. X WHAT’S PROPER Delia and Calista and Margaret Amelia and Betty Rodman I loved with devotion. And Mary Elizabeth I likewise loved with devotion. Therefore, the fact that my four friends would not, in the language of the wise and grown world, “receive” Mary Elizabeth was to me bitter and unbelievable. This astounding situation, more than intimated on the day of the picnic, had its confirmation a few days after the advent of Mary Elizabeth in the New Family, when the six of us were seated on the edge of the board walk before our house. It was the middle of a June afternoon, a joyous, girlish day, with sun and wind in that feminine mood which is the frequent inheritance of all created things. “I could ’most spread this day on my bread like honey, and eat it up, and not know the difference,” said Mary Elizabeth, idly. “The queen’s honey--the queen’s honey--the queen’s honey,” she repeated luxuriously, looking up into the leaves. Delia leaned forward. It particularly annoyed her to have Mary Elizabeth in this mood. “One, two, three, four, five of us,” Delia said, deliberately omitting Mary Elizabeth as, for no reason, she counted us. Mary Elizabeth, released from tasks for an hour or two before time to “help with the supper,” gave no sign that she understood, save that delicate flush of hers which I knew. “Yes,” she assented lazily, “one, two, three, four, five of us--” and she so contrived that five was her own number, and no one could tell whom of us she had omitted. “Let’s play something,” I hurriedly intervened. “Let’s play Banquet.” Action might have proved the solvent, but I had made an ill-starred choice. For having selected the rectangle of lawn where the feast was to be spread, Mary Elizabeth promptly announced that she had never heard of a banquet for five people, and that we must have more. “We’ve got six,” corrected Delia, unwarily. “Five,” Mary Elizabeth persisted tranquilly, “and it’s not enough. We ought to have thirty.” “Where you going to get your thirty?” demanded the exasperated Delia. “Why,” said Mary Elizabeth, “_that’s_ always easy!” And told us.