"Oh yes; please come in," was the reply; "but mamma is not downstairs to-day, so we have no fire in the drawing-room. I sit in the dining-room when mother is not well. She has a bad cold and head-ache. Please come in, Mrs. Atherton."
Salome preceded Mrs. Atherton into the dining-room, which Hans and Carl had combined to make very untidy by cutting up newspapers for the tail of a kite bigger than themselves, which Frank Pryor had in leisure moments made for them, with the assurance that "he" would carry a tail that would reach pretty near as far as Harstone Abbey Church. All these untidy scraps were on the floor, and one end of the table was even in a worse condition. Papers, books, pens, and ink were in a state of confusion impossible to describe. By the papers, and engulfed by them as they surged on every side, was a little work-basket, stuffed so full that the lid refused to think of closing, and out of which peeped a curious medley of articles too numerous and varied to mention.
"I am sorry to bring you in here," Salome began. "The children have nowhere else to play. They are gone now to help Ruth to make some tea-cakes. Please sit down."
Mrs. Atherton subsided into a chair, and then laughing, said,—
"I am sitting on some property, I think," and rising, she drew from under her a box of tools, from which Hans had been using the hammer.
"How dreadfully careless and naughty of the children!" Salome exclaimed. "I am so sorry. I do wish I were neat and tidy like Ada, who never left anything in the wrong place in her life."
"It is never too late to mend," said Mrs. Atherton with a smile. "I have not seen you for a week, except in church. I have been so busy; and every week and every day we get nearer to Christmas, the pressure grows greater. I wanted to ask you if you would come over to the vicarage and help me with some work."
"I work so badly," Salome said, "but I will do all I can."
"It is very easy, humble sort of work," Mrs. Atherton said,—"sewing strings on skirts, and buttons on aprons and pinafores, for Christmas presents in the parish, you know. Will you come in to-morrow afternoon for an hour or two?"
Salome promised; and then conversation seemed to flag, as it always does when something is on the mind of one of those who are trying to keep it up without alluding to that "something."