“If he loved her he couldn’t keep her out,” said Nancy shrewdly.  “She just isn’t in the story at all.  Could any of us write a chronicle of any house we ever lived in, and leave you out?”

Mrs. Carey took Nancy’s outstretched hands and was pulled up from the greensward.  “You have a few ‘instinks’ yourself, little daughter,” she said with a swift pat on the rosy cheek.  “Now, Peter, put your marbles in the pocket of your blue jeans, and take the milk pail from under the bushes; we must hurry or there’ll be no chowder.”

As they neared Garden Fore-and-Aft the group of children rushed out to meet them, Kitty in advance.

“The fish man didn’t come,” she said, “and it’s long past his time, so there’s no hope; but Julia and I have the dinner all planned.  There wasn’t enough of it to go round anyway, so we’ve asked Olive and Cyril to stay, and we’ve set the table under the great maple,—­do you care?”

“Not a bit; we’ll have a real jollification, because Nancy has some good news to tell you!”

“The dinner isn’t quite appropriate for a jollification,” Kitty observed anxiously.  “Is the news good enough to warrant opening a jar or a can of anything?”

“Open all that doth hap to be closed,” cried Nancy, embracing Olive excitedly.  “Light the bonfires on the encroaching hills.  Set casks a-tilt, and so forth.”

“It’s the German letter!” said Gilbert at a venture.

“What is the dinner, Kitty?” Mother Carey asked.

“New potatoes and string beans from the aft garden.  Stale bread made into milk toast to be served as a course.  Then, not that it has anything to do with the case, but just to give a style to the meal, Julia has made a salad out of the newspaper.”

Nancy created a diversion by swooning on the grass; a feat which had given her great fame in charades.

“It was only the memory of Julia’s last newspaper salad!” she murmured when the usual restoratives had been applied.  “Prithee, poppet, what hast dropped into the dish to-day?”

Julia was laughing too much to be wholly intelligible, but read from a scrap in her apron pocket:  “’Any fruit in season, cold beans or peas, minced cucumber, English walnuts, a few cubes of cold meat left from dinner, hard boiled eggs in slices, flecks of ripe tomatoes and radishes to perfect the color scheme, a dash of onion juice, dash of paprika, dash of rich cream.’  I have left out the okra, the shallot, the estragon, the tarragon, the endive, the hearts of artichoke, the Hungarian peppers and the haricot beans because we hadn’t any;—­do you think it will make any difference, Aunt Margaret?”

“It will,” said Nancy oracularly, “but all to the good.”

“Rather a dull salad I call it,” commented Gilbert.  “Lacks the snap of the last one.  No mention of boned sprats, or snails in aspic, calves’ foot jelly, iced humming birds, pickled edelweiss, or any of those things kept habitually in the cellars of families like ours.  No dash of Jamaica ginger or Pain-killer or sloe gin or sarsaparilla to give it piquancy.  Unless Julia can find a paper that gives more up-to-date advice to its country subscribers, we’ll have to transfer her from the kitchen department to the woodshed.”