As she spoke, they were startled by a loud bang of the knocker on the big front door. Rarely in their remembrance had the great brass griffin's head sent that hollow booming through the hall. Since they had been living in the south wing the neighbours always came to the side entrance.
"Who can it be at this hour of the morning?" cried Claribel, dropping her iron and clutching at her light curly hair, which was always in pretty disorder. "We're none of us dressed to meet strangers. Run, Mam Daphne! How fortunate you are here to go to the door!"
A moment later the old coloured woman was fumbling at the long unused bolts, while the girls listened breathlessly at the dining-room door. It was a lady's voice that reached them. Evidently some one who had been at the house in its palmy days, for she recognised Mam Daphne as an old servant.
"I want to see all the young ladies, Daphne," she said. "Tell them that it is Mrs. Gorham, their mother's old friend and schoolmate, from Lexington. Tell them I am on my way to Louisville, and have taken the liberty of stopping off to spend the day, without sending them word." Then, as if to herself, they heard her say: "I've lived in Kentucky too long, and enjoyed Alice Mason's hospitality too often not to be sure of a welcome from her daughters."
Wilma sank down limply in a disconsolate heap on the floor. "Oh, sister, what shall we do?" she whispered to Agnes. "Must we give up the picnic, and that glorious ride home by moonlight, when it's probably the only outing of the kind we'll have this summer? The boys were going to take their banjos and mandolins, and they counted on us to help serenade—"
Claribel interrupted her with a grim face. "There's no help for it. Don't you see, Wilma, that we've got to give it up? Don't you know that everything fit to eat in the house went into that picnic basket? We can't go without it, and we can't take it and leave sister to entertain the company without its help. But oh, it's certainly too provoking! Why, of all days in the year, should she drop down on us to-day, when this is the first time she has been here since we were out of the nursery!"
"I'm afraid there's nothing left for us to do but to keep up the old traditions, and entertain her in the best style we can, dears," said Agnes, gently. "Poor mamma's best friend must be showed the hospitality that she always found here. But, oh, girls, I did hope to finish that book to-day! It may be weeks before I'm keyed up to the pitch again where I feel equal to writing the climax as it should be done."
There were tears in Wilma's eyes as she carried the lunch-basket into the pantry, but she giggled as, passing the old portraits on the stairs, as they went up to dress, Claribel shook her fist in their faces.
"That's what we get for having the latch-string of our ancestors in our keeping," she exclaimed. "It's pretty well frayed out by this time, and cannot stand many more strains like this. It seems to me that we are sort of acting a lie. Mam Daphne will wait on the table to-day, and Mrs. Gorham will see what a spread we have, and will think that we live that way all the time."
"Well," said Wilma, hopefully, "we will live that way all the time when sister's 'Romance of Carrington' is published. How good it will be to feel able to ask the girls to stay to lunch any time they happen to drop in, and not have to be wondering if the butter will hold out!"