She pushed back her disheveled hair with one hand and turned on him a flushed and laughing face. 'I wanted some decorations, and we have no bunting nor enough paper to make streamers, so I thought of this. I think it's pretty. And our ceilings aren't properly finished yet: this hides them.'

'I think it's confounded silly,' he snapped. 'Lot of vegetable matter in the house, sure to bring bugs'. But the effect was attractive, and there was no doubt that the ceilings were in a bad state. He had been rather ashamed of them, for the recent plastering had already scaled into brown patches. He abandoned the subject for one more urgent. 'I wanted to give Ishmael some orders and was told he had gone. It seems you sent him to Georgetown with six of our men in the big barge. Pray, why did you do that?'

She bit her lips and busied herself straightening a china shepherdess on the mantel. Ishmael was their best boatman, and she had hurriedly dispatched him that morning to wait beside the Georgetown Wharf until Aaron's ship docked, then bring him posthaste up the river to the Oaks. Though Joseph would find all this out eventually, she did not wish him to do so yet. There was still time to stop the guests from coming, as he would certainly do if he knew.

'I discovered that we were out of some essential supplies,' she said lamely. 'I sent Ishmael, because he's so much quicker than the rest.'

Joseph grunted. 'I wish you would not do such things without consulting me, it's most inconvenient. What things did you need so badly?'

She was saved from answering by the wheezing chime from the corner clock.

'Oh, it's late!' she cried, escaping. 'I must get dressed.'

She had hoped to startle her guests, and she succeeded. The hordes of arriving Alstons and near Alstons were literally struck dumb by her arrangements. She greeted them all with a charming, unconscious smile, as each group stopped in the doorway and stared at the transformed rooms, which looked as though they had suddenly grown long gray hair. It gave the place a weird eldritch air, a fantastic unreality that shocked their conventional minds.

'What a peculiar thing to do,' whispered Maria Nisbett to Mrs. Huger, as they divested themselves of their wraps upstairs. 'Really outrageous, I think it. Just what one would expect of——' She gave an eloquent shrug. 'And, my dear, what in the world is that noise downstairs?'

They both paused to listen. Rhythmic strumming assailed their incredulous ears, an obtrusive barbaric rhythm that was strangely disquieting. The strumming was accompanied by the chant of soft male voices.

The ladies looked at each other. 'It sounds like niggers,' cried Lady Nisbett. 'It sounds like a Saturday night on the "street." But surely she couldn't——'