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“We’re going to have fried chicken and strawberries–my favorite dinner!” said Belle when Molly was showing her just how she liked the table set. After dinner, cheerfully polishing glasses, she suddenly burst into song as she stood at the open pantry window, some ten feet from the side porch. The words floated out:

“And the band was bravely playing
The song of the cross and crown–
Nearer, my god, to thee–
As the ship–“

Mrs. Tressady sat up, a stirring shadow among the shadows of the porch.

“I must ask her not to do that,” she announced quietly, and disappeared.

“And I spoke to her about joining in the conversation at dinner,” she said, returning. “She took it very nicely.”

Belle’s youthful spirits were too high to succumb to one check, however. Five minutes later she burst forth again:

“Ring, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, on your telephone–
And ring me up tonight–“

“Soft pedal, Belle!” Jerry called.

Belle laughed.

“Sure!” she called back. “I forgot.”

Presently the bright blot of light that fell from the pantry window on the little willow trees vanished silently, and they could hear Belle’s voice in the kitchen.

“Good-natured,” said Molly.

“Strong,” Mrs. Porter said.

“And pretty as a peach!” said Peter Porter.

“Oh, she’ll do!” Jerry Tressady said contentedly.

She was good-natured, strong, and pretty indeed, and she did a great deal. Timmy’s little garments fluttered on the clothes-line before breakfast; Timmy’s room was always in order: Timmy was always dainty and clean. Belle adored him and the baby returned her affection. They murmured together for hours down on the river bank or on the shady porch. Belle always seemed cheerful.

Nor could it be said that Belle did not know her place. She revelled in her title. “This is Mrs. Tressady’s maid,” Belle would say mincingly at the telephone, “and she does not allow her servants to make engagements for her.” “My friends want me to enter my name for a prize for the most popular girl in the Emville bazaar, Mrs. Tressady; but I thought I would ask your permission first.”

But there was a sort of breezy familiarity about her very difficult to check. On her second day at the ranch she suddenly came behind Jerry Tressady seated on the piano bench and slipped a sheet of music before him.

“Won’t you just run over that last chorus for me, Mr. Tress’dy?” asked Belle. “I have to sing that at a party Thursday night and I can’t seem to get it.”

No maid between Washington Square and the Bronx Zoo would have asked this favor. Yes, but Rising Water Ranch was not within those limits, nor within several thousand miles of them; so Jerry played the last chorus firmly, swiftly, without comment, and Belle gratefully withdrew. The Porters, unseen witnesses of this scene, on the porch, thought this very amusing; but only a day later Mrs. Porter herself was discovered in the act of buttoning the long line of buttons that went down the back of one of Belle’s immaculate white gowns.

“Well, what could I do? She suddenly backed up before me,” Mrs. Porter said in self-defence. “Could I tell her to let Hong button her?”

After dinner on the same day Peter Porter cleared a space before him on the table and proceeded to a demonstration involving a fork, a wedding ring, and a piece of string. While the quartet, laughing, were absorbed in the mysterious swinging of the suspended ring, Belle, putting away her clean silver, suddenly joined the group.

“I know a better one than that,” said she, putting a glass of water before Mrs. Tressady. “Here–take your ring again. Now wait–I’ll pull out one of your hairs for you. Now swing it over the water inside the glass. It’ll tell your age.”

Entirely absorbed in the experiment, her fresh young face close to theirs, her arms crossed as she knelt by the table, she had eyes only for the ring.