The clock in the hall struck seven, tolling out the notes sonorously. Every one seemed to be listening to it, and Amy flushed. It was almost as if the clock had said, "Time to go home! Time to go home!" And then to her horror her father turned toward her inquiringly. "Hadn't you better put on the supper, my dear?" he asked. "Your friends will be getting hungry."

For an agonized half minute Amy vainly tried to think of something she could say to soften the blow. She was magnanimous enough to acquit her father of all blame. Seeing them sitting there at that hour, especially as Hildegarde had taken off her hat, he had innocently assumed that they had been invited to dinner. And of course his blunder was equivalent to saying that they had stayed longer than was proper or desirable.

Then Amy's head whirled again. Her guests did not spring to their feet as she had expected them to do, protesting that they had not dreamed it was so late. Instead they sat quite still, only murmuring a polite disclaimer of being hungry. With the force of a blow the realization came over Amy that they had accepted her father's tacit invitation. They were going to stay to supper.

Amy rose, murmuring something unintelligible, and got out of the room quickly. O, if Peggy were only home, Peggy who had such a faculty for evolving something savory and appetizing from the least promising materials. Amy's cooking until recently had been confined to chafing-dish delicacies and candy. It was too late, she realized, to add to her scanty stores. She must feed four people with what had seemed barely enough for two, and must do it quickly.

Mechanically she lighted the oven of the gas stove. She remembered there was a can of tomato soup in the house, and the cold meat, sliced very thin, might possibly pass muster. She herself would refuse meat. Luckily there was a generous plateful of potatoes. Creamed and with a little cheese grated over them, they would be appetizing—and filling. She could make baking powder biscuit,—Amy excelled in baking powder biscuit—and there was honey to eat with them. For dessert she would fall back on preserved peaches and some left-over fruit cake. It was a queer, hit-or-miss meal, not a company repast in any sense of the word, but the best she could do under the circumstances.

It was while the biscuits were browning in the oven, and Amy was hastily setting the table for four, that her native common-sense re-asserted itself. "After all," her thoughts ran, "if people take pot luck, they can't expect to find things just as they would be if they were especially invited. They've seemed real friendly and if they like me well enough to stay to a pick-up supper, the first time they've ever set foot in my home, I ought to meet them half way. I can't give them much to eat, but I don't need to be quite as stupid as I've been for the last hour."

And so it came about that when the guests were summoned to the dining room, they encountered a very different hostess from the one who had entertained them previously, a hostess who twinkled and sparkled and kept them laughing. It seemed to Amy that, when she had removed the soup plates and brought in the sliced meat and creamed potatoes, she had seen an expression of astonishment flicker across Hildegarde's face, but she resolutely put the thought aside and continued to make herself agreeable. The baking-powder biscuits had risen nobly to the occasion. Amy thought them the best she had ever made. And she saw with relief that the bored expression had disappeared from Robert Carey's face, and that he really seemed to be enjoying himself.

Then suddenly into the midst of all this gaiety, Hildegarde dropped a bomb in the shape of a question. "What happened to detain Isabel?"

"Isabel?"

"Yes, Isabel Vincent, you know."