Part 9 (1/2)

”Getting to be an old, old man!” he said wearily, and Margaret hated herself because she had to quell an impatient impulse to tell him he was merely tired and cross and hungry, before she could say, in the proper soothing tone, ”Don't talk that way, Dad darling!” She had to listen to a long account of the ”raise,” wincing every time her father emphasized the difference between her own position and that of her employer. Dad was at least the equal of any one in Weston! Why, a man Dad's age oughtn't to be humbly asking a raise, he ought to be dictating now. It was just Dad's way of looking at things, and it was all wrong.

”Well, I'll tell you one thing!” said Rebecca, who had come in with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g soup plate of milk toast, ”Joe Redman gave a picnic last month, and he came here with his mother, in the car, to ask me. And I was the scornfullest thing you ever saw, wasn't I, Ted? Not much!”

”Oh, Beck, you oughtn't to mix social and business things that way!”

Margaret said helplessly.

”Dinner!” screamed the nine-year-old Robert, breaking into the room at this point, and ”Dinner!” said Mrs. Paget, wearily, cheerfully, from the chair into which she had dropped at the head of the table. Mr.

Paget, revived by sympathy, milk toast, and Rebecca's attentions, took his place at the foot, and Bruce the chair between Margaret and his mother. Like the younger boys, whose almost confluent freckles had been brought into unusual prominence by violently applied soap and water, and whose hair dripped on their collars, he had brushed up for dinner, but his negligee s.h.i.+rt and corduroy trousers were stained and spotted from machine oil. Margaret, comparing him secretly to the men she knew, as daintily groomed as women, in their spotless white, felt a little resentment that Bruce's tired face was so contented, and said to herself again that it was all wrong.

Dinner was the same old haphazard meal with which she was so familiar; Blanche supplying an occasional reproof to the boys, Ted ignoring his vegetables, and ready in an incredibly short time for a second cutlet, and Robert begging for corn syrup, immediately after the soup, and spilling it from his bread. Mrs. Paget was flushed, her disappearances kitchenward frequent. She wanted Margaret to tell her all about Mr.

Tenison. Margaret laughed, and said there was nothing to tell.

”You might get a horse and buggy from Peterson's,” suggested Mrs.

Paget, interestedly, ”and drive about after dinner.”

”Oh, Mother, I don't think I had better let him come!” Margaret said.

”There's so many of us, and such confusion, on Sunday! Ju and Harry are almost sure to come over.”

”Yes, I guess they will,” Mrs. Paget said, with her sudden radiant smile. ”Ju is so dear in her little house, and Harry's so sweet with her,” she went on with vivacity. ”Daddy and I had dinner with them Tuesday. Bruce said Rebecca was lovely with the boys,--we're going to Julie's again sometime. I declare it's so long since we've been anywhere without the children that we both felt funny. It was a lovely evening.”

”You're too much tied, Mother,” Margaret said affectionately.

”Not now!” her mother protested radiantly. ”With all my babies turning into men and women so fast. And I'll have you all together to-morrow--and your friend I hope, too, Mark,” she added hospitably. ”You had better let him come, dear. There's a big dinner, and I always freeze more cream than we need, anyway, because Daddy likes a plate of it about four o'clock, if there's any left.”

”Well--but there's nothing to do,” Margaret protested.

”No, but dinner takes quite a while,” Mrs. Paget suggested a little doubtfully; ”and we could have a nice talk on the porch, and then you could go driving or walking. I wish there was something cool and pleasant to do, Mark,” she finished a little wistfully. ”You do just as you think best about asking him to come.”

”I think I'll wire him that another time would be better,” said Margaret, slowly. ”Sometime we'll regularly arrange for it.”

”Well, perhaps that would be best,” her mother agreed. ”Some other time we'll send the boys off before dinner, and have things all nice and quiet. In October, say, when the trees are so pretty. I don't know but what that's my favorite time of all the year!”

Margaret looked at her as if she found something new in the tired, bright face. She could not understand why her mother--still too heated to commence eating her dinner--should radiate so definite an atmosphere of content, as she sat back a little breathless, after the flurry of serving. She herself felt injured and sore, not at the mere disappointment it caused her to put off John Tendon's visit, but because she felt more acutely than ever to-night the difference between his position and her own.

”Something nice has happened, Mother?” she hazarded, entering with an effort into the older woman's mood.

”Nothing special.” Her mother's happy eyes ranged about the circle of young faces. ”But it's so lovely to have you here, and to have Ju coming to-morrow,” she said. ”I just wish Daddy could build a house for each one of you, as you marry and settle down, right around our house in a circle, as they say people do sometimes in the Old World. I think then I'd have nothing in life to wish for!”

”Oh, Mother--in Weston!” Margaret said hopelessly, but her mother did not catch it.

”Not, Mark,” she went on hastily and earnestly, ”that I'm not more than grateful to G.o.d for all His goodness, as it is! I look at other women, and I wonder, I wonder--what I have done to be so blessed!

Mark--” her face suddenly glowed, she leaned a little toward her daughter, ”dearie, I must tell you,” she said; ”it's about Ju--”

Their eyes met in the pause.

”Mother--really?” Margaret said slowly.

”She told me on Tuesday,.” Mrs. Paget said, with glistening eyes.

”Now, not a word to any one, Mark,--but she'll want you to know!”