self-same evening.

“I’m so sorry,” she sighed. “I know I did idle my time today, Mother dear, but I can’t bear to have you—pay for it.”

“Nonsense, dear, I don’t mind. Really the exercise will do me good,” insisted Mrs. Brandon. “Just attend to the dishes and you won’t know these quarters presently. I’m glad we found the potatoes,” she said, but Nancy was now too serious to joke.

A call from the side porch checked their argument. It was Ruth calling to Nancy.

“Come along!” she shrilled through the screen door. “There’s going to be a band concert—”

“Oh, I can’t, Ruth,” Nancy called back. “I must do—”

“You must go, dear,” interrupted her mother.

At this Ruth came in to wait. Ted was already off—he did not need to be coaxed to give up his task, and when dishes were not being washed surely they could not be dried.

But Nancy felt guilty. In fact the band concert, novelty though it was, with firemen and a baseball team making up the “scrambled” programme, was not loud enough to still the voice of regret.

“I can’t bear to think of mother doing, now on this beautiful evening, what I should have done today,” she confided to Ruth, as they waited between numbers.

“I’ll help you tomorrow,” offered Ruth kindly. “And I won’t bring Vera. She’s rather critical—”

“I’ll be up at daybreak,” resolved Nancy, really determined now to get the little country home in order.

A band concert in Long Leigh was plainly an important event, and the numbers of persons crowding about the band-stand on the village green attested hearty appreciation for the musical efforts. The firemen, however, seemed to draw out the heaviest applause, but that was because old Jake Jacobs, the best piccolo player around, had been training them. Still, there was Pete Van Riper, the drummer on the baseball side of the platform. He certainly could drum, and the small boys around kept calling to him in baseball parlance such encouragements as “Make it a homer, Pete! Hug the mat! Hit her hard!” and such outfield coaching.

Ruth had met a number of her friends and some she introduced to Nancy, but the concert was spoiled for Nancy. She could see and actually feel her mother working in that little country place to which she had come, just to 

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