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When Miss Sally came back, she was attended by Juliana carrying a tray of lemonade glasses. Juliana proved to be a diminutive lass of about fourteen whose cheerful, freckled face wore an expansive grin of pleasure. Evidently Juliana was as fond of “company” as her mistress was. Afterwards, the girls overheard a subdued colloquy between Miss Sally and Juliana out in the hall.

“Go set the table, Juliana, and put on Grandmother Temple’s wedding china–be sure you dust it carefully–and the best tablecloth–and be sure you get the crease straight–and put some sweet peas in the centre–and be sure they are fresh. I want everything extra nice, Juliana.”

“Yes’m, Miss Sally, I’ll see to it. Isn’t it great to have company, Miss Sally?” whispered Juliana.

The Seymour girls long remembered that tea table and the delicacies with which it was heaped. Privately, they did not wonder that Juliana had indigestion when she had to eat many such unaided. Being hungry, they did full justice to Miss Sally’s good things, much to that little lady’s delight.

She told them all about herself. She had lived at Golden Gate Cottage only a year.

“Before that, I lived away down the country at Millbridge with a cousin. My Uncle Ephraim owned Golden Gate Cottage, and when he died he left it to me and I came here to live. It is a pretty place, isn’t it? You see those two headlands out there? In the morning, when the sun rises, the water between them is just a sea of gold, and that is why Uncle Ephraim had a fancy to call his place Golden Gate. I love it here. It is so nice to have a home of my own. I would be quite content if I had more company. But I have you today, and perhaps Beatrice and Helen will come next week. So I’ve really a great deal to be thankful for.”

“What is your Cousin Abner’s other name?” asked Mary, with a vague recollection of hearing of Beatrice and Helen–somebody–in Trenton.

“Reed–Abner Abimelech Reed,” answered Miss Sally promptly. “A.A. Reed, he signs himself now. He is very well-to-do, I am told, and he carries on business in town. He was a very fine young man, my Cousin Abner. I don’t know his wife.”

Mary and Ida exchanged glances. Beatrice and Helen Reed! They knew them slightly as the daughters of a new-rich family who were hangers-on of the fashionable society in Trenton. They were regarded as decidedly vulgar, and so far their efforts to gain an entry into the exclusive circle where the Seymours and their like revolved had not been very successful.

“I’m afraid Miss Sally will wait a long while before she sees Cousin Abner’s girls,” said Mary, when they had gone back to the parlour and Miss Sally had excused herself to superintend the washing of Grandmother Temple’s wedding china. “They probably look on her as a poor relation to be ignored altogether; whereas, if they were only like her, Trenton society would have made a place for them long ago.”

The Seymour girls enjoyed that visit as much as Miss Sally did. She was eager to hear all about their girlish lives and amusements. They told her of their travels, of famous men and women they had seen, of parties they had attended, the dresses they wore, the little fads and hobbies of their set–all jumbled up together and all listened to eagerly by Miss Sally and also by Juliana, who was permitted to sit on the stairs out in the hall and so gather in the crumbs of this intellectual feast.

“Oh, you’ve been such pleasant company,” said Miss Sally when the girls went away.

Mary took the little lady’s hands in hers and looked affectionately down into her face.

“Would you like it–you and Juliana–if we came out to see you often? And perhaps brought some of our friends with us?”

“Oh, if you only would!” breathed Miss Sally.