DORINDA GATES, as every one knew, was a shy, old-fashioned creature, the kind of girl who prefers a book to a boy and who has an abhorrence, founded on timidity, for strangers. Dorinda had heard so often that she was quite without resource or initiative that she would no more have questioned her lack of those traits than Bella's possession of them. Mother had so often lamented Dorinda's shyness and her inaptitude for the gentler graces of amusing conversation and sprightly entertainment that Dorinda knew as well as Laura or Elaine that she had no social gifts. That she was dependable and sweet-natured, the family accepted without comment, and banked on heavily.

If her brothers and sisters had not been so brilliant and easy and charming, so eminently formed for sociability, Dorinda's deficiencies in these respects would, of course, have been less noticeable. But with Laura the most popular girl in the colony, Elaine the prettiest, and Bella first in demand for any project of the younger summer set, Dorinda's insufficiencies could not but show out with amazing distinct

ness.

The boys, to a man, had possessed the same qualities, but, as they were all either in France or on the way there, Dorinda did not now have to measure her shortcomings against more than the sum total of the girls' attractions. Nobody pretended to understand how she could be so different from the rest of them. They had simply come to accept the fact, and to let her have her own way in her preference for staying at home.

That was why, this morning, Dorinda and Grandmother and Grandmother's maid were the only people about the big gray-shingled house that sat so comfortably and coolly between the bays. Mother and Bella and Elaine and Laura had motored early to a distant camp in response to half a dozen invitations.

"Come along, Dorry. It will do you good," Bella had.urged.

"Why?" Dorinda's slim, boyish fig ure loitered at ease in the doorway. "I don't see that it does you much good just to do things that you don't want to do."

Bella laughed. "But it 's queer that you don't want to do them. The idea! A girl like you, staying home from a trip to camp!"

"I like camp well enough. What bores me is having to talk to the men. You know I can't, Bella. They scare me."

"Men you 've known all your life, silly!"

"Men you 've known."

Bella shook her head. "Talking to men is as easy as rolling off a log."

But

"Maybe it is, if you know how. honestly, I'd rather stay home and play with the dogs. They're more fun."

So the maid-Grandmother refused to tolerate a nurse-established the little old lady on the terrace, and Dorinda settled down in the sunshine beside her with the puppies. The cook had been given a day off, and the waitress had helped herself to one, with Dorinda's connivance: "Oh, run along. Jane always gets Grandmother's lunch, and I'll forage for myself in the pantry." Everything was peaceful and happy, promising a long, delightful day.

Into this beatitude fell a bomb. The telegram was addressed to Mother, but Dorinda opened it with a distinct recollection of Mother's last injunction. “We shall be four needles in a hay-stack. If anybody wants us, let them wait till we get home."

The telegram was dated the previous day, and said simply; "Coming to-morrow. Thanks awfully. Will bring three. R. F. Gates."

Dorinda read it twice, and then she looked at the urchin who had brought it.

"Where," she demanded, "has this been? It should have been delivered yesterday!"

The boy opposed her gaze with an innocence too blank to fathom. "Dunno," he answered, after which he pocketed the fee and departed.

"What is it?" asked Grandmother, closing her magazine on a marking finger. "Rex Gates!" The words came out in a little gasp. "Rex will be here to-daywith three others! Mother told him to come any day and bring some friends, but she understood it would be any day next week!"

"H'm." Grandmother extended her hand for the telegram. "There seems to be no mistake about it." Her gaze returned from the yellow slip to the girl beside her. It was shrewd and a bit quizzical, but not in the least domineering.

Dorinda looked up from her cogitations. “Is n't it awful!”

Grandmother nodded. "I don't see any way out. Do you?"

"No. There's the whistle of the express now. Most likely they 're on it." She shook off the puppies, and walked with her long, swift stride up the flight of turf steps and into the house.

Grandmother watched her go with a smile in her eyes. Then she closed her Then she closed her magazine and sat back, expectantly, to await developments.

Dorinda went straight to the telephone. "Give me 578-W-Gail? Yes, please, I want to speak with Gail Andrews. Gail, come over this minute and help me out. Everybody's gone except Grandmother, maids and all, and there are four men that I never saw in my life coming on this train that's just whistled - coming to spend the day. What 's that? But I can't! Rex is some kind of a cousin. He's not very old, I guess, and he 's going across any time now. His home 's in Nevada. So he could n't go there, and Mother thought-I 'll explain afterward. Stop talking and come! Run every step of the way, if you love me."

The receiver snapped back on its hook, and Dorinda ran her finger down the telephone-list to the butcher's number.

Five minutes later she was back on the terrace. "Grandmother," she announced, "you will have to be the chief feature of the entertainment-you and the puppies." "Certainly, my dear. Thank you for including the puppies."

"But you know, Gran darling, I have n't time to put things properly."

"I know." Grandmother touched the bell at her elbow. "My knitting, Jane, with the unbroken skein, and my best cap," Grandmother's tone was brisk; "the one with lavender ribbons. And find the white kitten."

The maid departed on her conglomerate errands.

"If I might ask, what about dinner? Shall we try Jane?"

Dorinda shook her head. "She might walk out of the house, if we did."

"Let her go," said Grandmother promptly. "I don't want her."

"But Mother wants you to have her. No, I've thought it all out. Gail's coming over. Gail and I will get dinner." "I admire your pluck."

"We ought to be able to boil potatoes and broil steak.”

Grandmother's blue-veined hands clapped softly. "Go to it, Dorry!" she applauded. "I knew you would." "What else is there to do?" "What, indeed?" Grandmother's twinkle was well hidden.

The maid appeared, bearing knitting and cap and kitten. Grandmother let the maid adjust the cap, and herself adjusted the kitten. The knitting, she laid on the wicker table at her elbow.

"Madam's nap," suggested the maid. "Nap?" said Grandmother briskly. "Don't speak to me of such a thing today, Jane. I have other matters on hand, pressing matters."

"But, madam—”

"Take it away!" The delicate wisp of lace on Grandmother's head bobbed autocratically. "Take it away at once. We'll have two naps to-morrow-if necessary, a dozen. But remember, do not mention that word to me again to-day."

The maid retired, vanquished, but un

THE three boys in olive-drab uniforms who trailed behind their leader up the rock stairway that led to the big grayshingled house between the bays were inclined to be facetious at his expense.

"Say you knew anybody here, Rex?" "Better drop us into the briny and go it alone."

"The flag 's out. Nothing else. Here's where I get off. I'm modest."

"Quit your kidding and come along." Suddenly, by a path threading the bushes that shouldered a corner of the house, appeared a girl, walking swiftly a slim, straight girl, with frank boyish eyes and hand outstretched.

"Oh, how do you do? I thought I'd have time to get as far as the road, at least. So sorry you had to find your own way from the station. Grandmother and the puppies are on the terrace."

"That sounds good," said he in front. "Bella, is it, or Laura, or-"

"Oh, no, I 'm Dorinda! Mother and the girls are away. They went before your wire came. The boy carried it in his pocket all night, I'm positive. Mother will be so sorry! She-she was expecting you next week, you see."

The khaki boy stopped short. "See here, if it is n't convenient, we-we can cut and-well, not exactly come again, but You don't want to be surprised by a whole regiment, do you?"

"I don't mind, if you don't. But I'm sorry about Mother and the girls. There's a puppy apiece, though. You may each have your choice—for to-day,"

Dorinda was conscious of a ripple disturbing the polite calm of three pairs of watching eyes, of a murmur, sotto voce, "Lead on to the puppies, Rex." Then her fingers were gripped successively by three masculine hands, and she was turning to lead the way around the corner of the house. The four young soldiers had no notion how hotly the heart beat under the cool white blouse that they followed. A grandmother and puppies! The prospect was new in their experience of entertainment, and alluring.

The path plunged into a cool, bougharched tunnel, and emerged again as abruptly into a green, outdoor room, carpeted with close-clipped grass and looking off across misty spires of larkspur to the shining bay. On the grass four puppies tumbled over one another and a pinkcheeked girl, and in the midst sat a little old lady in a white cap, knitting, while a kitten pawed a ball of gray yarn at her feet. Did Dorinda hear some one say very softly, "Gee"?

There was no ice. How could there be? The little grandmother and the puppies saw to that. Dorinda and Gail found almost at once that all they need do was to stand ready to fill in the gaps, if there were gaps. Presently they lost consciousness of even that. The girls forgot their shyness, and the boys forgot that they were strangers, only one of them with a slender thread of cousinship to bind him to this peaceful scene. It became, by the magic of its very unpretentiousness, its simple happiness, home to them, whether they had ever known its like or not, home spelled with four capital letters shrine for hearts.

The boy called "Pete" was tall and slim, and, Dorinda could n't help suspecting, would have been even shyer than she, if it had n't been for Grandmother. As it was, he attached himself to the little old lady with an adoring gallantry that she found very charming. He held the fresh skein of yarn for her to wind, resettled the cushion at her feet, and told her his life story. Pete, Dorinda overheard, had had his own way to make in

"That we were going to have steak?" Jinks grinned. "I did n't. Now I do. Intuition, thy name is Clayton J. Adams, Jr." He thumped his chest, and, picking up a cushion, deposited himself at Grandmother's feet and reached for the kitten. "No, you don't!" said Pete, firmly. "This is my cat-and my grandmother," he added under his breath.

"I did n't quite catch your last remark," observed Jinks, tranquilly. "Better run along, sonny. Potatoes to wash." "I don't understand."

Dorinda was frankly staring.

Rex took her by the elbow. "Lead on, Macduff! Lead us to the ammunition stores. In plain English we 're going to get dinner. Savvy?"

"But-but you need n't!"
"But-but we are!"

Dorinda laughed. "I shall love to see you!"

tato-bin! Me for the tank yonder. Hello, the juice is out!"

"We were going to have a cold lunch,” explained Dorinda.

"Watch me stoke her up!"

Almost before the two girls knew what he meant, the lids were off the range, Rex had produced kindling from somewhere, and a fire was roaring up the chimney. Nick, inspecting labels in the pantry, announced that he was the greatest and only chef the Ritz had ever known, and began ladling ingredients into a bowl. Pete, in a businesslike manner, washed potatoes, shouting for Rex to get the water boiling.

"Where's that lazy lubber, Jinks?" Rex demanded. "Still spooning with Grandma? Go and haul him in, girls. Tell him he 's got to set the table or he won't get any of our dinner when our dinner is hot."

In the end it was Gail and Jinks who together set the table and Dorinda who in the kitchen, as well as she was able, explained where the cook kept what.

"Where 'll I find the cake, Dorry?" "Cake? In that tin, Rex. And pies in the pantry."

"Hooray! One man with only two side-arms advanced on the pantry and swept it clear of pies. Great victory for

In the next hour a storm struck the conservative kitchen of the big gray house. Dorinda felt rather glad that her mother was not there to see. She wondered what the cook would say on her return. It seemed hardly conceivable that such a tornado could pass and leave no trace.

"You 're to sit tight and tell us where things are," Rex commanded, putting his cousin into a chair. "Necessary to have a map of the occupied territory. You 're the map. See? Now what's this?" flinging open a door. "Ha! Aprons! Just where our cook keeps 'em at home. Step up, fellows, and avoid the rush! No ladies need apply. Closed season on ladies' aprons. Attire thy fairy form, Petey boy. Tie the strings around your neck, idiot. Volunteers for a raid on the po

table set, Jinks?"

Sooner than either of the girls would have thought possible, out of the raillery and confusion arose the voice of Nick declaring that his biscuits were done, while under Jinks's skilful manipulation the kitchen filled with a savory odor of steak. Then Pete pulled off his apron and announced he was going to bring in Grandmother and the kitten.

It was an astonishingly well-served and appetizing table to which they all sat down. They put Grandmother in the seat of honor, and they waited on her like a queen. like a queen. And Grandmother ignored. the frantic Jane and ate precisely what she chose, and in a delicate, aristocratic, but quite unmistakable, way had the time of her life. The fun which had risen so riotously in the kitchen softened a little