Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/67

 laden threads hanging loose, shedding a harvest of tiny bright black berries that had clung too long to cling any more. And their hats! Picture hats, mock romantic, perched as if for flight on the tops of the three Mortimer heads. They sat there, elegant rag bags, half-starved, gallant, and ridiculous, almost trembling with eagerness as their upper lips lengthened over the thin rims of the teacups, but each remembering always to leave half a cake uneaten. "Poor old souls!" Kate thought, and because of the three Misses Mortimer the studio was brighter and more beautiful; she herself felt refreshed, young and beloved.

Aunt Sarah came next, refusing tea, looking at Kate's paintings through her lorgnette, and making no comments. And with her came Carrie Pyne, wearing a much too small green hat, that looked as if she had snatched up a St. Patrick's Day favor and put it on just to be funny. Beaming and breathless, she passed sandwiches to the people who were filling the studio now. Hatty Butterfield was taking notes for the society page of the Sunday News. Kate had to send Annie Sullivan for hot water and fresh tea over and over again. People were laughing and enjoying themselves, really staying, coming back for second cups, feeling free and Bohemian, in a studio. Mrs. Martine smoked half a cigarette, pretending to hide behind the herons and snowy willow trees of the Japanese screen, coughing and screwing up her eyes, although