Héloïse laughed. Her mother's enthusiasms always amused her. To hear of the presence, within inviting distance, of a young man of talent (talent was always genius to Mrs. Spear) was instantly to make her forget her family and financial cares, however pressing, and begin to wonder anxiously what the cook could scrape together for lunch—a sincere respect for good food being one of the anomalies of her oddly assorted character, and a succulent meal her instinctive homage to celebrity. "What time did you tell him to come—one or half-past? I believe Susan could still manage a cheese soufflé—but it's nearly twelve now."

"Yes; I know it is—and you must give me a chance to take my bath. And how could I ask him to lunch? It wouldn't be decent, when he's staying with the Tracys, who, after all, are distant connections of ours, and whom we certainly don't want to invite—do we?"

Mrs. Spear, at this reminder, clasped her long expressive hands self-reproachfully. "Oh, those poor Tracys! Yes, they are distant relations. But if Lorburn Tracy, who was a poor sort of man anyhow, and less than nobody on his father's side, chose to marry the gardener's daughter at the Willows, we could hardly be expected, could we …  ? Not that that sort of thing really matters in the least. Why should it? Only—well, perhaps we've been snobbish about the Tracys, darling. Do you think we have? There's nothing I hate so much as being snobbish. Do you think we ought to send Jacob down now with a note, and ask them all up to lunch with this young novelist you speak of? Not a novelist—a poet? What a head I've got! My dear, I really believe we ought to. Is there any notepaper here? There so seldom is, in your room … but if you can find a scrap, do write a line to Mrs. Tracy, and say … say … well, put it as nicely as you can … and say that Jacob is at their door, with the car, waiting to bring them up; oh, with the young man, of course! Remind me again of the young man's name, my dear."

"Well, if I said all that, Mother, part of it would hardly be true, as the car's a mile or more up the Thundertop road at this minute, and refuses to budge." Héloïse let her mother's outcries evaporate, and continued quietly: "Besides, you know perfectly well that we can't ask the Tracys to lunch. We never have, and why should we now? They'd hate it as much as we should. They're plain working people, and they have nothing on earth to say to us, or we to them. Why should we suddenly pretend the contrary?"