happy fashion.

But they were fresh and eager at four o'clock when Marlborough
Gardens came in for tea by the fire, or when the telephone
summoned them to some other fireside for tea. It rarely was tea;
Nancy wondered that even the women did not care for tea. They
sometimes drank it, and crunched cinnamon toast, after card
parties, but on Saturdays and Sundays, when men were in the group,
stronger drinks were the fashion, cocktails and highballs, or a
bowl of punch. The Bradleys were charming people, Marlborough
Gardens decided warm-heartedly; they had watched the pretty new-
comer and her splashing, sturdy children, all through the first
quiet summer--the children indeed, were all good friends already.
The grown-ups followed suit,

Motor-cars began to come down the short lane that ended at the
gate of Holly Court, and joyous and chattering men and women to
come in to tea. Nancy loved this, and to see a group of men
standing about his blazing logs filled Bert's heart with pride. It
was rather demoralizing in a domestic sense, dinner was delayed,
and their bedtime consequently delayed, and Dora, the cook was
disgruntled at seven o'clock, when it was still impossible to set
the dinner table. But Nancy, rather than disturb her guests, got a
second servant, an enormous Irishwoman named Agnes, who carried
the children off quietly for a supper in the kitchen, when tea-
time callers came, and managed them far more easily than their
mother could.

Before the second summer came Nancy had come to be ashamed of some
of her economies that first summer. Taking the children informally