Meanwhile Elizabeth in her kitchen was busy unearthing divers culinary crimes in the various cupboards and closets where the stolid Celia displayed a positive ingenuity in concealing the evidences of her misdoings. It was not perhaps to be wondered at that the untutored Norwegian should elect to boil her dish-cloth with the embroidered doilies from the dining-room; or that the soap should be discovered in a state of gelatinous collapse in the bottom of the scrubbing pail and the new cereal cooker burning gaily on the range. But Elizabeth's strained patience finally snapped in twain at sight of a pile of parti-coloured bits of china in the bottom of the coal-hod.

"My best salad bowl!" she exclaimed, stooping to examine the grimy fragments. "When did you break it, Celia?"

The girl was standing at the sink, presenting her broad back like a solidly built wall against the rising tide of her mistress' indignation. Her big blond head sank forward over her dish-pan; a guttural murmur issued from her lips.

"And I have always been so careful of it! It was one of my wedding presents!" continued Elizabeth, in a fine crescendo. "How did you do it?"

The girl had turned on both faucets, and the descending torrent of rushing water drowned the anguished inquiry.

"You know I told you never to touch that bowl. I preferred to wash it myself. You must have taken it out of the dining-room. Why did you do it?"

"I no take heem out—naw! I smash heem when I move the side-brood." The girl's broad magenta-tinted face was turned suddenly upon her mistress. She appeared excessively pleased with her mastery of the difficult English tongue. "I scrub ze floor; I s-m-a-s-h heem," she repeated positively.

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. Scrubbing was Celia's one distinguished accomplishment. The spotless floors and table and the shining faucets and utensils bore evidence to the earnestness of her purpose and the undeniable strength of her arms.

"You didn't mean to do it, I am sure," she said at last, with a renunciatory sigh; "but remember in future you must not move the dishes on the side-board unless I am there to help you."

"I no move heem; I s-m-a-s-h heem."

"Yes, I understand; but don't do it again."

"I no s-m-a-s-h heem 'gain—Naw!" The girl's china blue eyes gazed guilelessly into the depths of the coal-hod; she lifted them with a triumphant smile upon her mistress. "I have—s-m-ash!"

The trill of the door-bell put an end to this improving conversation; Elizabeth answered it herself by way of the sitting-room, where she paused to remove Richard, damp and dripping, from an ecstatic exploration of the gold-fish tank. The sound of his passionate protest followed her to the front door and lent a crisp decision to her tones as she informed a gentleman of an Hebraic cast of countenance that she did not wish to exchange old shoes of any description for "an elegant sauce-pan, lady; cost you one dollar in the store. Only one pair shoes, lady, this grand piece; cost you one dol——"

Elizabeth shut the door firmly upon the glittering temptation and returned to her youngest born, who was weeping large tears of wrath in the middle of the sitting-room floor.

"Come up stairs with mother, Richard; your sleeves are all wet," exhorted his mother, struggling with a sudden temptation. It would have been a relief to her feelings to spank him soundly, and she acknowledged as much to herself.

"Come, dear," she repeated, in a carefully controlled voice. But Richard's fat legs doubled limply under him; he appeared unable to take a single step; whereupon his slender mother masterfully picked him up, despite the mysterious increase in his weight which she had had frequent occasion to notice in the person of an angry child.

It was useless at the present moment to remind her son of oft-repeated prohibitions concerning the gold-fish tank. Elizabeth pondered the question of an appropriate penalty with knit brows, while she washed and dressed him in dry garments to the accompaniment of his doleful sobs.

"Now, Richard, you must stay in your crib till you can be a good boy and mind mother," was the somewhat vague sentence of the maternal court at the conclusion of the necessary rehabilitation, whereupon the infant howled anew as if under acute bodily torture.

As she turned to pick up the wet clothing a cheerful voice called her to the top of the stairs. "Shall I come up, dear? Your kitchen divinity admitted me and told me to walk right in."

"Oh,—Marian; I'll be right down. I've had to dress Dick over again, and everything's in confusion. Go in the sitting-room, please."

Elizabeth wanted time to collect herself before meeting the cool, amused eyes of Marian Stanford, whose ideas on the government of children were so wholly at variance with her own.

"When you are ready to be a good boy, Richard, you may call mother and I will come up and take you out of your crib," was her parting observation to the culprit.

"Oh, Elizabeth, dear; I'm afraid I interrupted a little maternal seance," was Mrs. Stanford's greeting. "No? Well, I'm glad if I haven't. It does vex me so when someone chances to call just as I am having it out with one of the infants."

"Richard got his sleeves wet," explained Richard's mother, with what the other mentally termed "a really funny air of dignity."

Mrs. Stanford's uplifted eyebrows and a flitting glance in the direction of the gold-fish tank expressed her complete understanding of the matter.

"I remember you told me your child was fond of fishing," she murmured. "So like his dear father."

Elizabeth's tense mouth relaxed into a smile. The howls upstairs had ceased; but she was conscious of waiting for something, she hardly knew what, to follow.

"Do tell me what you do in a case like this?" pursued Mrs. Stanford guilefully. "You know I'm perfectly willing to abandon my crude attempts at training the infant mind the instant you, or anybody, can show me something more efficient than my beloved butter-paddle. I tell Jim the B. P. is my best friend these days. It is absolutely the only thing that intimidates Robert in the slightest degree."

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. "Intimidates?" she repeated.

Mrs. Stanford laughed. "Yes; intimidates. My dear, that child is a terror! I'm at my wit's end with him half the time; and as for Livingstone, he's going to be worse; I can see that already."

Elizabeth hesitated while the warm colour dyed her cheeks. "You know what I think about terrifying children into obedience, Marian; and I know what you think. We really oughtn't to discuss it."

The fine scorn in her eyes suddenly gave place to a look of alarm at sound of an appalling thump on the floor above. She darted from the room and up the stairs to the accompaniment of roars of anguish.

Marian Stanford moved her handsome shoulders gently. "She must have put Richard in his crib and told him to stay there," was her entirely correct supposition. "Of course he didn't stay put."

Marian Stanford was a graduate of Wellesley, and her mind filled with fragments of imperfectly acquired science not infrequently chanced upon a suggestive sequence. She could not resist the temptation to share her present gleam of enlightenment with dear Elizabeth (who had never been to college) when she presently returned, bearing Richard in her arms. The child was still drawing convulsive, half-sobbing breaths, and a handkerchief wet with witch hazel was laid across his forehead.

"He fell out of his crib, poor darling!" explained Elizabeth.

"I suppose you had told him not to get out?"

Elizabeth eyed her friend speculatively over the top of her baby's curly head. It was useless to be offended with Marian; she never seemed to be aware of it.

"You were about to say something enlightening," she observed with delicate sarcasm. "You may as well out with it."

Mrs. Stanford smiled appreciatively. "You always were a clever creature, Elizabeth," she drawled; "but had it occurred to you that I would never have thought of thumping my child as the law of gravitation thumped yours just now? You wouldn't punish a certain young person for disobeying because you are so anxious to spare him pain; but I should say he'd been punished pretty severely—corporal punishment at that!"

"The poor darling fell out of his crib, Marian, and hurt himself. Any child might do that."

Marian Stanford got to her feet lazily. She was one of those women who manage to accomplish a great deal of work with the least possible apparent effort. All her movements were deliberate, even indolent. Elizabeth envied her sometimes in the midst of her own somewhat breathless exertions.

"I came over to get your pattern for Carroll's blouse," she said; "not to discuss the government of children. But we seem to be at it, as usual. What I meant to convey was commonplace enough; if you had seen fit to settle the matter of the fish tank with a sound spanking, administered on the spot, Richard might not—mind I do not say would not—but he might not have acquired this particular thump at the hands of Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did. It just occurred to me, dear, and you know I never could keep my thoughts to myself as I should."

Elizabeth arose, deposited her child on the couch and produced a roll of patterns from a drawer in her desk. "Here is the blouse, Marian," she said; "you'll need to cut it larger for Robbie; he is so broad in the shoulders. Be careful about the collar, though, or you'll get it too big around the neck."

Marian Stanford was weak when it came to sewing. Elizabeth felt herself again as she saw the puzzled look in her friend's face. "This is the neck-band," she explained, "and this is the collar. You must be careful not to stretch the cloth after you have cut it. But you know perfectly well, Marian, that we never shall think alike about the way to bring up children. I simply will not whip my children—no matter what they do! They are not animals to be tortured into submission."

Mrs. Stanford laughed good-humouredly. "I'm afraid mine are," she said. "But never mind, Betty; we won't quarrel over it; you're too sweetly useful, and frankly I can't afford to. If I get into a mess over this blouse I shall come over to be extricated."

Ten minutes later Elizabeth was surprised to hear her husband's rapid foot in the hall. She ran to meet him with an anxious face.

"Nothing's the matter, dear," he said at once; "that is to say, nothing alarming. I was over this way to see Biddle & Crofut and ran in to tell you that Miss Tripp telephoned to the office this morning to inform me that she'd been called into town a day earlier than she expected to come, and would I—could I get word to her dearest Elizabeth that she would be with her this afternoon."

Elizabeth drew a deep breath. "Well," she said resignedly; "Celia is sweeping the spare room, and I'm making some new curtains out of my old muslin dress; you'll be surprised to see how well they'll look, Sam. But I've only a rice pudding for dessert, and——"

"I might order some ice-cream," he suggested, "and some—er——"

A sudden suspicion assailed his Elizabeth; she gazed searchingly at her husband. "You haven't told me all," she said. "Don't overwhelm me by saying that Mrs. Tripp is coming too."

He met her inquiring eyes rather shamefacedly. "To tell you the truth, Betty, Hickey chanced to be in the office at the time the Tripp lady telephoned, and I—er—recalled what you said last night; so I——"

"You didn't ask Mr. Hickey to dinner to-night, Sam?"

"Why not? Aside from any sentimental considerations George is good company; and he's very appreciative of a certain little home-maker I know, and of the dinners he's eaten here in the past."

"But it seems so—sudden!"

He roared with laughter. "'In your mind's eye, Horatio,'" he quoted, when he had recovered himself somewhat. "You must remember, my dear, that neither the Tripp lady nor Hickey are aware of your Machiavellian designs upon their future."

"Mr. Hickey wasn't a part of my designs, as you call them," she reminded him with spirit. "I merely said that I wished poor Evelyn could find some nice suitable man, and you said——"

"We certainly owe the lady a 'suitable' article of some sort or other," he observed, with a reminiscent twinkle in his blue eyes, "if it's nothing more than a husband, and I'd like you to understand, Betty, that Hickey is my candidate."

She glanced at her watch with a little shriek of dismay. "We mustn't waste another minute talking," she said. "Evelyn will be here before I'm half ready for her."

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