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“By the way,” continued Mr. Ellsworth, with a still happier thought, “you must allow Mrs. Ellsworth to furnish the dinner for Mrs. Van Kamp’s shiver party.”

“Dinner!” gasped Mr. Van Kamp. “By all means!”

Both men felt an anxious yawning in the region of the appetite, and a yearning moisture wetted their tongues. They looked at the slumbering Uncle Billy and decided to see Mrs. Tutt themselves about a good, hot dinner for six.

“Law me!” exclaimed Aunt Margaret when they appeared at the kitchen door. “I swan I thought you folks ‘u’d never come to yore senses. Here I’ve had a big pot o’ stewed chicken ready on the stove fer two mortal hours. I kin give ye that, an’ smashed taters an’ chicken gravy, an’ dried corn, an’ hot corn-pone, an’ currant jell, an’ strawberry preserves, an’ my own cannin’ o’ peaches, an’ pumpkin-pie an’ coffee. Will that do ye?” Would it do! Would it do!!

As Aunt Margaret talked, the kitchen door swung wide, and the two men were stricken speechless with astonishment. There, across from each other at the kitchen table, sat the utterly selfish and traitorous younger members of the rival houses of Ellsworth and Van Kamp, deep in the joys of chicken, and mashed potatoes, and gravy, and hot corn-pone, and all the other “fixings,” laughing and chatting gaily like chums of years’ standing. They had seemingly just come to an agreement about something or other, for Evelyn, waving the shorter end of a broken wishbone, was vivaciously saying to Ralph:

“A bargain’s a bargain, and I always stick to one I make.”

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