"One cannot always be a credit to one's family cook, Hapsie," returned her mother. "My appetite has been mislaid somewhere between here and the city hall, in the subway, I fancy."
"I think it must have gone over to the Gordons' flat, blown the wrong whistle, the way the grocers do," said Happie. "You never in all your life saw any one so hungry as those two boys were last night when we came home from the park."
"You had a good time, didn't you, dear?" Mrs. Scollard smiled at her second daughter, who was smiling over her recollection of the previous afternoon when she and Margery and Laura had been to the Metropolitan Museum with Bob and the two Gordon boys, and to tea afterwards in the Gordon flat, and had laughed every three minutes of the six hours.
"What are you going to do to-day, my house-keepers?"
"Scour our pans, our Patty-Pans," said Happie promptly, before Margery could speak.
"My dear, this little flat will be washed away!" protested her mother, submitting her glove to Polly for buttoning.
"Mother, it truly does need cleaning," said Margery. "You don't see it in real daylight, except on Sunday, but we know! What's the matter?"
Her mother had caught the back of a chair and swayed slightly forward, but stood erect and smiling in an instant, though her face was a shade paler than usual.
"Nothing, dearies; don't look so frightened! There is a shadow that comes over my eyes of late, and for a second I am wiped out of existence, but you see how quickly I come back! Indigestion, probably; it really is nothing."
"How can you have indigestion when you don't eat?" demanded Margery, not at all reassured by her mother's explanation.