“Yes, I know you are; but—­stay shut up!  All this isn’t as it is a going to be,—­though it’s not bad even now!”

Kate resolutely stayed shut up.

“You see that carpet is just put there; within this last hour, I dare say.  Look at the clean ravel in the end.  They’ve taken away the old, tramped one.  That’s a piece out of saved-up spare ends of breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know!  It’s faded, and it’s homely; but it’s spandy clean!  I sha’n’t let it stay raveled long.  And I’ve got things.  Just wait till my trunk comes.  My ottoman, I mean.  That’s what it turns into.  Have you got a stuffed cover to your trunk, Katie?”

Kate lifted up her eyebrows for permission to break silence.

“Of course you can, when you’re asked a question.  You’ve had time now for second thoughts.  I wasn’t going to let you fly right out with discouragements.”

“It is you that flies out with taking for granteds,” said Kate Sencerbox, in a subdued monotone of quietness.  “I was only going to remark that we had got neither cellar windows, nor attic skylights after all.  I’m favorably surprised with the accommodations.  I’ve paid four dollars a week for a great deal worse.  And I wouldn’t cast reflections by arguing objections that haven’t been made, if I were the leader of this enterprise, Miss Bree.”

“Kate!  That’s what I call real double lock-stitch pluck!  That goes back of everything.  You needn’t shut up any more.  Now let’s come down and see about supper.”

They had pinned on linen aprons, with three-cornered bibs; such as they wore at their machines.  When they came down into Mrs. Scherman’s room, that young matron said within herself,—­“I wonder if it’s real or if we’re in a charade!  At any rate, we’ll have a real tea in the play.  They do sometimes.”

“What is the nicest, and quickest, and easiest thing to get, I wonder?” she asked of her waiting ministers.  “Don’t say toast.  We’re so tired of toast!”

“Do you like muffins and stewed oysters?” asked Bel Bree, drawing upon her best experience.

“Very much,” Mrs. Scherman answered.

And Kate, looking sharply on, delighted herself with the guarded astonishment that widened the lady’s beautiful eyes.

“Only we have neither muffins nor oysters in the house; and the grocery and the fish-market are down round the corner, in Selchar Street.”

“I could go for them right off.  What time do you have tea?”

Really, Asenath Scherman had never acted in a charade where her cues were so unexpected.

“I wonder if I’m getting mixed up again,” she thought.  “Which is the cook?”

Of course a cook never would have offered to go out and order muffins and oysters.  Mrs. Scherman could not have asked it of the parlor-maid.

Kate Sencerbox relieved her.

“I’ll go, Bel,” she interposed.  “I guess it’s my place.  That is, if you like, Mrs. Scherman.”