“I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M’ma.  Wasn’t that—­” Her voice faltered nervously.  “Was it something you would have rather telephoned about?”

“Would rather have telephoned about?” Mrs. Haviland corrected automatically.  “Well, M’ma would rather feel that when she sends a message it is given to just the person to whom she sent it, in just the way she sent it.  However, in this case no harm was done.  Don’t hook your heel over the rung of your chair, dear!  Ring the bell, Isabelle, I want Alice.”

“I’ll hook you, M’ma!” volunteered Charlotte.

“Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice.  And now you girls might run along.  I’ll be down directly.”

A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid’s hands.  Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she owed Alice as well as herself this little office.  Charlotte might have hooked her gown for her; indeed, she might with a small effort have done it herself, but it was Alice’s duty, and nothing could be worse for Alice, or any servant, than to have her duties erratically assumed by others on one day and left to her on the next.  This was the quickest way to spoil servants, and Florence never spoiled her servants.

“They have a pleasant day for their picnic,” she observed now, kindly.  Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied herself with the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully.  Her two brothers had borrowed their employer’s coal barge to-day, and with a score of cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches, sardines, camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller number of chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable baby or two, were making a day of it on the river.  Alice had timidly asked, a few days before, for a holiday to-day, that she might join them, but Mrs. Haviland had pointed out to her reasonably that she, Alice, had been at home, unexpectedly, because of her mother’s illness, not only the previous Sunday, but the Saturday, too, and had got half-a-day’s leave of absence for her cousin’s wedding only the week before that.  Alice was only eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely exhausted long before her mistress’s pleasant voice had stopped.  Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day.

“I guess they’ll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point,” said Alice, rising from her knees.

“Well, I hope they’ll be careful; one hears of so many accidents among foolish young people there!” Mrs. Haviland answered, going downstairs to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by them, proceeding to her own lunch.

For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was maintained between the older girls and their governess.  Charlotte and Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly.  Little Florence presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile cutting a channel across her timbale through which the gravy ran in a stream.