TO KATHLEEN MARY THOMPSON

      Lover of books, who never fails to find
      Some good in every book, your namesake sends
      This book to you, knowing you always kind
      To small things, timid and in need of friends.

      O friend!  I know not which way I must look
        For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
        To think that now our life is only drest
      For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
      Or groom!—­We must run glittering like a brook
        In the open sunshine, or we are unblest;
        The wealthiest man among us is the best: 
      No grandeur now in nature or in book
      Delights us.  Rapine, avarice, expense,
        This is idolatry; and these we adore: 
        Plain living and high thinking are no more: 
        The homely beauty of the good old cause
      Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence. 
        And pure religion breathing household laws. 
                           —­William Wordsworth.

CHAPTER I

“Annie, what are you doing?  Polishing the ramekins?  Oh, that’s right.  Did the extra ramekins come from Mrs. Brown?  Didn’t!  Then as soon as the children come back I’ll send for them; I wish you’d remind me.  Did Mrs. Binney come? and Lizzie?  Oh, that’s good.  Where are they?  Down in the cellar!  Oh, did the extra ice come?  Will you find out, Annie?  Those can wait.  If it didn’t, the mousse is ruined, that’s all!  No, wait, Annie, I’ll go out and see Celia myself.”

Little Mrs. George Carew, flushed and excited, crossed the pantry as she spoke, and pushed open the swinging door that connected it with the kitchen.  She was a pretty woman, even now when her hair, already dressed, was hidden under snugly pinned veils and her trim little figure lost under a flying kimono.  Mrs. Carew was expecting the twenty-eight members of the Santa Paloma Bridge Club on this particular evening, and now, at three o’clock on a beautiful April afternoon, she was almost frantic with fatigue and nervousness.  The house had been cleaned thoroughly the day before, rugs shaken, mirrors polished, floors oiled; the grand piano had been closed, and pushed against the wall; the reading-table had been cleared, and wheeled out under the turn of the stairway; the pretty drawing-room and square big entrance hall had been emptied to make room for the seven little card-tables that were already set up, and for the twenty-eight straight-back chairs that Mrs. Carew had collected from the dining-room, the bedrooms, the halls, and even the nursery, for the occasion.  All this had been done the day before, and Mrs. Carew, awakening early in the morning to uneasy anticipations of a full day, had yet felt that the main work of preparation was out of the way.