"Maria has been so long at her high-and-mighty boarding-school,"he said, "that I reckon her head's as full of fancies as a cheese is of maggots.She's even got a notion that she wants to turn out all this new stuff--to haul the old rubbish back again but I say wait till the boy comes on--then we'll see, we'll see.""And in the meantime we'll go in to supper," put in the girl with a kind of hopeless patience, though Carraway could see that she smarted as from a blow."This is Will, Mr.Carraway," she added almost gaily, skillfully sweeping her train from about the feet of a pretty, undersized boy of fourteen years, who had burst into the room with his mouth full of bread and jam."He's quite the pride of the family, you know, because he's just taken all the honours of his school.""History, 'rithmatic, Latin--all the languages," rolled out Fletcher in a voice that sounded like a tattoo."I can't keep up with 'em, but they're all thar, ain't they, sonny?""Oh, you could never say 'em off straight, grandpa," retorted the boy, with the pertness of a spoiled girl, at which, to Carraway's surprise, Fletcher fairly chuckled with delight.
"That's so; I'm a plain man, the Lord knows," he admitted, his coarse face crinkling like a sundried leaf of tobacco.
"We've got chickens for supper--broiled," the boy chattered on, putting out his tongue at his sister; "that's why Lindy's havin'
it an hour late she's been picking 'em, with Aunt Mehitable helping her for the feathers.Now don't shake your head at me, Maria, because it's no use pretending we have 'em every night, like old Mrs.Blake.""Bless my soul!" gasped Fletcher, nettled by the last remark."Do you mean to tell me those Blakes are fools enough to eat spring chicken when they could get forty cents apiece for 'em in the open market?""The old lady does," corrected the boy glibly."The one who wears the queer lace cap and sits in the big chair by the hearth all day--and all night, too, Tommy Spade says, 'cause he peeped through once at midnight and she was still there, sitting so stiff that it scared him and he ran away.Well, Aunt Mehitable sold her a dozen, and she got a side of bacon and a bag of meal.""Grandfather, you've forgotten Aunt Saidie," broke in Maria, as Fletcher was about to begin his grace without waiting for a dumpy little woman, in purple calico, who waddled with an embarrassed air from her hasty preparations in the pantry.At first Carraway had mistaken her for an upper servant, but as she came forward Maria laid her hand playfully upon her arm and introduced her with a sad little gaiety of manner."I believe she has met one of your sisters in Fredericksburg," she added, after a moment.
Clearly she had determined to accept the family in the lump, with a resolution that--had it borne less resemblance to a passive rage could not have failed to glorify a nobler martyrdom.It was not affection that fortified her--beyond her first gently tolerant glance at the boy there had been only indifference in her pale, composed face--and the lawyer was at last brought to the surprising conclusion that Fletcher's granddaughter was seeking to build herself a fetish of the mere idle bond of blood.
The hopeless gallantry of the girl moved him to a vague feeling of pity, and he spoke presently with a chivalrous desire of making her failure easy.
"It was Susan, I think," he said pleasantly, shaking hands with the squat little figure in front of him, "I remember her speaking of it afterward.""I met her at a church festival one Christmas Eve," responded Aunt Saidie, in a high-pitched, rasping voice."The same evening that I got this pink crocheted nuby." She touched a small pointed shawl about her shoulders."Miss Belinda Beale worked it and it was raffled off for ten cents a chance."Her large, plump face, overflushed about the nose, had a natural kindliness of expression which Carraway found almost appealing;and he concluded that as a girl she might have possessed a common prettiness of feature.Above her clear blue eyes a widening parting divided her tightly crimped bands of hair, which still showed a bright chestnut tint in the gray ripples.
"Thar, thar, Saidie," Fletcher interrupted with a frank brutality, which the lawyer found more repelling than the memory of his stolen fortune."Mr.Carraway doesn't want to hear about your fascinator.He'd a long ways rather have you make his coffee."The little woman flushed purple and drew back her chair with an ugly noise from the head of the lavishly spread table.
"Set down right thar, suh," she stammered, her poor little pretense of ease gone from her, "right thar between Brother Bill and me.""You did say it, Aunt Saidie, I told you you would," screamed the pert boy, beginning an assault upon an enormous dish of batterbread.
Maria flinched visibly."Be silent, Will," she ordered.
"Grandfather, you must really make Will learn to be polite.""Now, now, Maria, you're too hard on us," protested Fletcher, flinging himself bodily into the breach, "boys will be boys, you know--they warn't born gals.""But she did say it, Maria," insisted the boy, "and she bet me a whole dish of doughnuts she wouldn't.She did say 'set'; I heard her." Maria bit her lip, and her flashing eyes filled with angry tears, while Carraway, as he began talking hurriedly about the promise of tobacco, resisted valiantly an impulse to kick the pretty boy beneath the table.As his eyes traveled about the fine old room, marking its mellow wainscoting and the whitened silver handles on the heavy doors, he found himself wondering with implacable approval if this might not be the beginning of a great atonement.
The boy's mood had varied at the sight of his sister's tears, and he fell to patting penitently the hand that quivered on the table."You needn't give me the doughnuts, Aunt Saidie; I'll make believe you didn't say it," he whispered at last.
