Left alone, Kay went to the window. For three days it had rained, turned the roads into slime and Mrs. Mallory's heart to despair, but today was cold and clear. She was glad of that. If Tom had gone to the ranch for the week-end he could get back, now the roads were drying. She wondered how he had managed over that week-end. Long ago she had learned that his idea of making a bed was to fling the coverings over it anyhow, and as he said: "Let nature take its course." She was smiling a little as she went down the stairs.
The guests were already arriving. They came in soberly, creaked up the stairs, took off their dark substantial wraps, their unfashionable hats, and creaked soberly down again. They were not, as Mrs. Mallory had said, society folks; some were the wives of small storekeepers in Ursula, others had come in from the back country, from small cattle ranches; still others had been forcibly detached from their isolated hard-working lives by the recent hard times and were trying to fill in the empty anxious days. One and all they were elderly women; their hands, as they offered them, felt rough in her clasp, their faces were dried and lined with years of sun and alkali dust.
She felt her heart warming toward them. They were genuine. There rose before her Aunt Bessie, her short hair, her carefully massaged face, her long fingers with the long pointed tinted nails. She was as old as they were, older maybe. Suddenly she resented what life had done to them, and behind her resentment there was a pang of dismay. This was her future; in time, she too would dry up and wrinkle. Her youth would pass, and there would be no one to note its passing.
They shook hands and sat down. Mrs. Mallory had brought in extra chairs and arranged them around the wall. They sat stiffly, their tired hands folded in their laps. A decorous buzz of talk arose. Kay, in a low rocker in the center, felt like a very young kitten encircled by motherly cats softly purring. From the dining room came the clattering of plates as Nellie put them down, the pungent odor of coffee drifted in, and then she became conscious of an-
