"But, Ella, dear," the mother would protest, "there are others coming--"
"Leave the others to me! I'll telephone and make it the day before." Ella would seal and dispatch the note, and be inclined to feel generously tender and considerate of her mother for the rest of the day.
Ella was at home for a few moments, almost every day; but she did not dine at home more than once or twice in a fortnight. But she was always there for the family's occasional formal dinner party in which events Susan refused very sensibly to take part. She and Miss Baker dined early and most harmoniously in the breakfast-room, and were free to make themselves useful to the ladies of the house afterward. Ella would be magnificent in spangled cloth-of-gold; Emily very piquante in demure and drooping white, embroidered exquisitely with tiny French blossoms in color; Mrs. Saunders rustling in black lace and lavender silk, as the three went downstairs at eight o'clock. Across the wide hall below would stream the hooded women and the men in great-coats, silk hats in hand. Ella did not leave the drawing-room to meet them, as on less formal occasions, but a great chattering and laughing would break out as they went in.
Susan, sitting back on her knees in the upper hall, to peer through the railing at the scene below, to Miss Baker's intense amusement, could admire everything but the men guests. They were either more or less attractive and married, thought Susan, or very young, very old, or very uninteresting bachelors. Red-faced, eighteen-year-old boys, laughing nervously, and stumbling over their pumps, shared the honors with cackling little fifty-year-old gallants. It could only be said that they were males, and that Ella would have cheerfully consigned her mother to bed with a bad headache rather than have had one too few of them to evenly balance the number of women. The members of the family knew what patience and effort were required, what writing and telephoning, before the right number was acquired.
The first personal word that Kenneth Saunders ever spoke to his sister's companion was when, running downstairs, on the occasion of one of these dinners, he came upon her, crouched in her outlook, and thoroughly enjoying herself.
"Good God!" said Kenneth, recoiling.
"Sh-sh--it's only me--I'm watching 'em!" Susan whispered, even laying her hand upon the immaculate young gentleman's arm in her anxiety to quiet him.
"Why, Lord; why doesn't Ella count you in on these things?" he demanded, gruffly. "Next time I'll tell her--"
"If you do, I'll never speak to you again!" Susan threatened, her merry face close to his in the dark. "I wouldn't be down there for a farm!"