“By George, there’s nobody like you, Willard!” Mr. Hartwell declared, slapping him on the back. “I don’t know whether your wife realizes how lucky she is, and you can tell her I said so.”

“How’s Mabel, Mr. Hartwell?” Marcia asked, politely. “Are you married yet?”

This set Mr. Hartwell and Papa into another fit of laughter right in the middle of the street. Mr. Hartwell shook his head admiringly.

“That one always hits the nail on the head, don’t she, Harry?”

Marcia was pleased but mystified at the merry reaction to her question, and seeing her puzzled frown Mr. Hartwell hastened to say that Mabel was in the best of health and gaining steadily, at last report weighing two hundred pounds and fit as a fiddle.

“A bull fiddle,” said Papa, which convulsed his friend.

It was nearly eight o’clock when they reached the Fair Store building. A dark doorway led to the upstairs apartments and ballroom. A small blue light at the landing gave a grisly glow to the hall, dimly indicating a rotten board in the floor and a broken banister. Bad plumbing and the circumstance of street cats using the vestibule for a comfort station lent an intimate aroma to the place, not particularly mellowed by the Corylopsis incense burning in the ballroom’s Ladies’ Parlor. On the first door of the second floor was a placard bearing the news, “Odd Fellows Dance. Admission Fifty Cents, Ladies Free,” and issuing from this spot could be heard sounds of an orchestra tuning up. Other doors led to the Fair Store stockrooms, a Christian Science Reading Room, a dentist’s office, and at the end of the hall the Novelty Shop. This was Grandma’s new headquarters. Marcia clutched Lena’s arm as they heard the well-remembered slippered footsteps coming to answer their knock. Lena jerked her arm free.

“Remember what I told you,” Lena whispered sharply. “I’m the one that’s going to stay here.”

It was always discouraging to have others calm in moments your own heart was thundering with wild rapture, and Grandma was as calm as ever at sight of her callers.

“Grandma. Oh, Grandma,” cried Marcia, flinging herself at the old lady the instant the door opened and trembling with delight. But Grandma’s pleasure in seeing her family was in no way proportionate to the visitors’ estimation of the joy they were bestowing. She accepted their embraces with moderate warmth and welcomed them into her parlor with more pride in a parlor of her own than in the callers.

“They can’t take away my independence,” she said, patting Mr. Hartwell fondly on the arm. “So long as I’ve got friends like Mr. Sweeney and Mrs. Carmel here I don’t need to take anything from my family.”

Mrs. Carmel, it seemed, was busy in the kitchen over a large iron pot of fondant, muttering like a witch as she stirred it. She hoped they would excuse her for continuing this chore, because the truth was their chocolate fondant had caught on like a house afire, and they had to be on their toes every minute, meeting the demand. London Junction might be behind the times in some ways but not in its candy tastes.