“Maria, Maria, stir around.  See what you can pick up while they’re getting out of the cab.  Isn’t it always just so?”

Maria, the daughter of fifteen, hastily laid aside her novel and did her best to remove the cups and saucers from the breakfast table, not omitting to break one in her hurry.  Meanwhile her mother closed the kitchen door, caught up from the dining-room sofa a promiscuous pile of hats, coats, rubbers and shawls, threw them into a convenient closet, placed the colored cloth on the table and hastened to open the front door to admit her guests.

“Come in!  Come in!  I’m ever so glad to see you, but you must take us just as we are.  Did you come on the train?”

“Yes, and got Jenkins to bring us up from the station.  He’s to take us back at three o’clock this afternoon.  We can’t make a long visit, but we’re going to take dinner with you, if it’s perfectly convenient.”

“Oh, yes! of course.  It’s always convenient to have you.  We don’t make strangers of you at all.”

While Mrs. Upton spoke these hospitable words her heart sank within her at the remembrance of her unbaked bread and her neglect to order meat for dinner.

“Here, Maria, just help Aunt Jane to take off her wraps, I’ll be right back.”

Mrs. Upton darted up-stairs, carrying with her a pair of trousers which she had been over an hour in mending.  For want of them Charlie had been unable to go to school that morning.  He was reading in his room.

“Here, Charlie!  Put these on and run down to the butcher’s and get some steak, and stop at the baker’s and get some rolls and a pie, and tell them I’ll pay them to-morrow.  I don’t know where my pocketbook is now.”

“Ma,” drawled Charlie in reply, “I haven’t my shoes up here, only my slippers and rubbers.”

“Well, wear them then and keep out of the mud.  I don’t want you sick to-night.  Be sure to come in the back way so that Uncle Josh won’t see you.  He’ll think we’re always behindhand.”

If Uncle Josh had thought so he would have been near the truth.  Mrs. Upton was one of those unfortunate persons who seem to be always hard at work and always in the drag.  She had the undesirable faculty of taking hold of things wrong end first.

As water does not rise higher than its level, so children are not apt to have better habits than their parents.  Charlie and Maria and the rest of the family lived in a state of constant confusion.

At noon Mr. Upton came to dinner.  It was not unusual for him to be forced to wait, and he had learned to be resigned; so he sat down patiently to talk with the visitors.  Soon three children came in from school, all eager to eat and return.  What with their clamorous demands, and the necessity for preparing extra vegetables and side-dishes, and anxiety to please all around, and to prevent her bread from growing sour, Mrs. Upton was nearly distracted.  Yet Maria tried to help, and Aunt Jane invariably looked upon matters with the kindly eye of charity.  Things were not so bad as they might have been, and dinner was ready at last.