Part 25 (1/2)

But no one else, and certainly not Mis' Holcomb herself, perceived the surface of things vexed by a ripple.

”Well, now,” said that great Mis' Amanda Toplady heartily, ”that _is_ so about saltin' your potato. I know it now, but I never thought of it right out before. Lots o' things are true that you don't think of right out. Now I come to put my mind on it, I know at our house if I cut up a big plate o' bread we don't eat up half of it; but just as sure as I don't, I hev to get up from the table an' go get more bread.”

”I know--we often speak of that!” and ”So my husband says,” chimed Mis'

Holcomb and Mis' Sturgis.

”Seems as if I'd noticed that, too,” Calliope said brightly.

Whereupon: ”My part,” Miss Lucy Liberty contributed shyly, ”I always like to see a great big plate of good, big slices o' bread come on to the table. Looks like the crock was full,” she added, laughing heartily to cover her really pretty shyness, ”an' like you wouldn't run out.”

Calliope's glance at me was still more distressed, for my table showed no bread at all, and my maid was at that moment handing rolls the size of a walnut. But for the others the moment pa.s.sed undisturbed.

”I've never noticed in particular about the bread,” observed Mis'

Sykes,--she had great magnetism, for when she spoke an instant hush fell,--”but what _I_ have noticed”--Mis' Sykes was very original and usually disregarded the experiences of others,--”is that if I don't make a list of my was.h.i.+ng when it goes, something is pretty sure to get lost.

But let me make a list, an' even the dust-cloths'll come back home.”

Everybody had noticed that. Even Libbie Liberty a.s.sented, and exchanged with her sister a smile of domestic memories.

”An' every single piece has got my initial in the corner, too,” Mis'

Sykes added; ”I wouldn't hev a piece o' linen in the house without my initial on. It don't seem to me rill refined not to.”

Calliope's look was almost one of anguish. My hemst.i.tched damask napkins bear no saving initial in a corner. But no one else would, I was certain, connect that circ.u.mstance, even if it was observed, with what Mis' Sykes had said.

”It's too bad Mis' Fire Chief Merriman wouldn't come to-day,” Calliope hastily turned the topic. ”She can't seem to get used to things again, since Sum died.”

”She didn't do this way for her first husband that died in the city, I heard,” volunteered Mis' Sturgis. ”Why, I heard she went out _there_, right after the first year.”

”That's easy explained,” said Mis' Sykes, positively.

”Wasn't she fond of him?” asked Mis' Holcomb. ”She seems real clingin', like she would be fond o' most any one.”

”Oh, yes, she was fond of him,” declared Mis' Sykes. ”Why, he was a professional man, you know. But then he died ten years ago, durin' tight skirts. Naturally, being a widow then wasn't what it is now. She couldn't cut her skirt over to any advantage--a bell skirt is a bell skirt. An' they went out the very next year. When she got new cloth for the flare skirts, she got colours. But the Fire Chief died right at the height o' the full skirts. She's kep' cuttin' over an' cuttin' over, an'

by the looks o' the Spring plates she can keep right on at it. She really can't afford to go _out_ o' mournin'. I don't blame her a bit.”

”She told me the other day,” remarked Libbie Liberty, ”that she was real homesick for some company food. She said she'd been ask' in to eat with this family an' that, most hospitable but very plain. An' seems though she couldn't wait for a company lay-out.”

”She won't go anywheres in her c.r.a.pe,” Mis' Sykes turned to me, supplementing Calliope's former information. ”She's a very superior woman,--she graduated in Oils in the city,--an' she's fitted for any society, say where who _will_. We always say about her that n.o.body's so delicate as Mis' Fire Chief Merriman.”

”She don't take strangers in very ready, anyway,” Mis' Holcomb explained to me. ”She belongs to what you might call the old school. She's very sensitive to _every_thing.”

The moment came when I had unintentionally produced a hush by serving a salad unknown in Friends.h.i.+p. When almost at once I perceived what I had done, I confess that I looked at Calliope in a kind of dread lest this too were a _faux pas_, and I took refuge in some question about the coming Carnival. But my attention was challenged by my maid, who was in the doorway announcing a visitor.

”Company, ma'am,” she said.

And when I had bidden her to ask that I be excused for a little:--

”Please, ma'am,” she said, ”she says she has to see you _now_.”

And when I suggested the lady's card:--