Their mother jumped into their father’s arms, laughing secretly. Her new brown sailor hat fell off and the curly brown bangs blew merrily over her white forehead until she had pinned on her hat once more. From the way Papa picked up Florrie and then hurried their mother into the side door of the building, the children guessed some fun was in the air that was only for grown-ups.

“I know what they’re having,” said Lena calmly. “They’re having beer.”

Marcia looked at her six-year-old sister, envious of this superior sophistication.

“Whenever they go in the side door instead of the front door of any place, it means they’re having beer to drink,” Lena enlarged obligingly. “Like in papa’s hotel.”

The little treat was plainly not a success, for Florrie’s indignant bellow was heard from the moment the screen door closed on them. A few moments later she emerged triumphantly in her mother’s arms, round face red with rage, fists in mouth. She was only moderately soothed by being jiggled up and down.

“Spoiled,” said their father.

“No, dear, it’s just that she wants to keep on riding,” explained their mother. True enough, as soon as the carriage started again, Florrie fell blissfully asleep in their mother’s arms. They did not stop again till they had come to Venice Corners, halfway to London Junction. Venice Corners was a pretty little village with a white frame church on one side of the main street and a fine brick church on the other. In these towns the brick churches were always the Methodist and the smaller wooden ones were Episcopal or Baptist. When they got to London Junction the children had been promised a brick Sunday school, even though they had been baptized in one of the wooden faiths.

Venice Corners had no purring flour mill like Elmville, and no little lake with rowboats like Oakville, but it countered these charms by being placed on top of a hill so that on either side the little houses marched down step by step, each with its hedge moustache, and a red chimney for a hat. It was after the noon hour now and they were all hungry.

“If we’re going to see Chris and Isobel we’d better eat first,” said their mother. “We mustn’t be any bother to Isobel.”

Chris was their mother’s cousin.

They drew up under a shade tree on the Methodist Church lawn. Their mother took out the lunch basket and passed out hardboiled eggs, chicken drumsticks, and bread and jam. She wiped off their faces with paper napkins. She fed Florrie from her own lunch, and their father petted the horse, making jokes about keeping horse and carriage instead of returning them to the Busbys. Their mother put the baby in the clothes basket to nap, and began to tidy herself for the visit to Chris and Isobel. She fussed with her jabot, a ripple of white lace fastened with her garnet crescent pin over her brown-and-white checked taffeta waist. Papa tweaked her bangs as fast as she pinned them in place, until she begged, “Oh, darling, please!” She straightened the girls’ hair ribbons and smoothed out their mussed sashes of blue silk. Lena had a new blue bonnet with baby-blue forget-me-nots and velvet streamers. This was because she was the oldest and the prettiest and their father liked to have her look like the little girl on the Singer Sewing Machine Calendar, the one where the rosy little girl is bending over a baby’s cradle. Marcia wore Lena’s outgrown embroidered dress with her last year’s faded straw hat, but she was not disturbed because at least she was permitted to wear her birthday locket and besides her feet were the biggest. Florrie, except for a brand-new blue bonnet with lace ruffled edge, wore the freshly starched but faded dregs of her sisters’ outgrown wardrobes, and presently justified this economy by throwing up over her embroidered white bib.