Part 7 (1/2)

”Yes, mother dear!” said Mrs. Matson.

”Yes, mother dear,” whispered Curtis.

”And how many times,” Mrs. Matson inquired, ”have I told you that you were not to play with Georgie? How many times, Curtis?”

Curtis murmured vaguely. He wished that Georgie would please go.

”You don't know?” said Mrs. Matson incredulously. ”You don't know? After all mother does for you, you don't know how many times she has told you not to play with Georgie? Don't you remember what mother told you she'd have to do if you ever played with Georgie again?”

A pause. Then the nod.

”Yes, mother dear!” said Mrs. Matson.

”Yes, mother dear,” said Curtis.

”Well!” Mrs. Matson said. She turned to the enthralled Georgie. ”You'll have to go home now, Georgie-go right straight home. And you're not to come here any more, do you understand me? Curtis is not allowed to play with you-not ever.”

Georgie rose.

” 'By,” he said philosophically, and walked away, his farewell unanswered.

Mrs. Matson gazed upon Curtis. Grief disarranged her features.

”Playing!” she said, her voice broken with emotion. ”Playing with a furnaceman's child! After all mother does for you!”

She took him by a limp arm and led him, unresisting, along the walk to the house; led him past the maid that opened the door, up the stairs to his little blue bedroom. She put him in it and closed the door.

Then she went to her own room, placed her package carefully on the table, removed her gloves, and laid them, with her bag, in an orderly drawer. She entered her closet, hung up her coat, then stooped for one of the felt slippers that were set scrupulously, in the first dancing position, on the floor beneath her nightgown. It was a lavender slipper, with scallops and a staid rosette; it had a light, flexible leather sole, across which was stamped its name, ”k.u.mfy-Toes.”

Mrs. Matson grasped it firmly by the heel and flicked it back and forth. Carrying it, she went to the little boy's room. She began to speak as she turned the door-k.n.o.b.

”And before mother had time to take her hat off, too,” she said. The door closed behind her.

She came out again presently. A scale of shrieks followed her.

”That will do!” she announced, looking back from the door. The shrieks faded obediently to sobs. ”That's quite enough of that, thank you. Mother's had just about plenty for one morning. And today, too, with the ladies coming this afternoon, and all mother has to attend to! Oh, I'd be ashamed, Curtis, if I were you-that's what I'd be.”

She closed the door, and retired, to remove her hat.

The ladies came in mid-afternoon. There were three of them. Mrs. Kerley, gray and brittle and painstaking, always thoughtful about sending birthday-cards and carrying gla.s.s jars of soup to the sick. Mrs. Swan, her visiting sister-in-law, younger, and given to daisied hats and crocheted lace collars, with her transient's air of bright, determined interest in her hostess's acquaintances and activities. And Mrs. Cook. Only she did not count very much. She was extremely deaf, and so pretty well out of things.

She had visited innumerable specialists, spent uncounted money, endured agonizing treatments, in her endeavors to be able to hear what went on about her and to have a part in it. They had finally fitted her out with a long, coiling, corrugated speaking-tube, rather like a larger intestine. One end of this she placed in her better ear, and the other she extended to those who would hold speech with her. But the s.h.i.+ning black mouthpiece seemed to embarra.s.s people and intimidate them; they could think of nothing better to call into it than ”Getting colder out,” or ”You keeping pretty well?” To hear such remarks as these she had gone through years of suffering.

Mrs. Matson, in her last spring's blue taffeta, a.s.signed her guests to seats about the living-room. It was an afternoon set apart for fancy-work and conversation. Later there would be tea, and two triangular sandwiches apiece made from the chopped remnants of last night's chicken, and a cake which was a high favorite with Mrs. Matson, for its formula required but one egg. She had gone, in person, to the kitchen to supervise its making. She was not entirely convinced that her cook was wasteful of materials, but she felt that the woman would bear watching.

The crepe-paper baskets, fairly well filled with disks of peppermint creams, were to enliven the corners of the tea-table. Mrs. Matson trusted her guests not to regard them as favors and take them home.

The conversation dealt, and favorably, with the weather. Mrs. Kerley and Mrs. Swan vied with each other in paying compliments to the day.

”So clear,” said Mrs. Kerley.

”Not a cloud in the sky,” augmented Mrs. Swan. ”Not a one.”

”The air was just lovely this morning,” reported Mrs. Kerley. ”I said to myself, 'Well, this is a beautiful day if there ever was one.' ”

”There's something so balmy about it,” said Mrs. Swan.

Mrs. Cook spoke suddenly and overloudly, in the untrustworthy voice of the deaf.

”Phew, this is a scorcher!” she said. ”Something terrible out.”

The conversation went immediately to literature. It developed that Mrs. Kerley had been reading a lovely book. Its name and that of its author escaped her at the moment, but her enjoyment of it was so keen that she had lingered over it till 'way past ten o'clock the night before. Particularly did she commend its descriptions of some of those Italian places; they were, she affirmed, just like a picture. The book had been drawn to her attention by the young woman at the Little Booke Nooke. It was, on her authority, one of the new ones.

Mrs. Matson frowned at her embroidery. Words flowed readily from her lips. She seemed to have spoken on the subject before.

”I haven't any use for all these new books,” she said. ”I wouldn't give them house-room. I don't see why a person wants to sit down and write any such stuff. I often think, I don't believe they know what they're writing about themselves half the time. I don't know who they think wants to read those kind of things. I'm sure I don't.”

She paused to let her statements sink deep.

”Mr. Matson,” she continued-she always spoke of her husband thus; it conveyed an aristocratic sense of aloofness, did away with any suggestion of carnal intimacy between them-”Mr. Matson isn't any hand for these new books, either. He always says, if he could find another book like David Harum, he'd read it in a minute. I wish,” she added longingly, ”I had a dollar for every time I've heard him say that.”

Mrs. Kerley smiled. Mrs. Swan threw a rippling little laugh into the pause.

”Well, it's true, you know, it really is true,” Mrs. Kerley told Mrs. Swan.

”Oh, it is,” Mrs. Swan hastened to rea.s.sure her.

”I don't know what we're coming to, I'm sure,” announced Mrs. Matson.

She sewed, her thread tw.a.n.ging through the tight-stretched circle of linen in her embroidery-hoop.

The stoppage of conversation weighed upon Mrs. Swan. She lifted her head and looked out the window.

”My, what a lovely lawn you have!” she said. ”I couldn't help noticing it, first thing. We've been living in New York, you know.”

”I often say I don't see what people want to shut themselves up in a place like that for,” Mrs. Matson said. ”You know, you exist, in New York-we live, out here.”

Mrs. Swan laughed a bit nervously. Mrs. Kerley nodded. ”That's right,” she said. ”That's pretty good.”

Mrs. Matson herself thought it worthy of repet.i.tion. She picked up Mrs. Cook's speaking-tube.

”I was just saying to Mrs. Swan,” she cried, and called her epigram into the mouthpiece.

”Live where?” asked Mrs. Cook.

Mrs. Matson smiled at her patiently. ”New York. You know, that's where I got my little adopted boy.”

”Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Swan. ”Carrie told me. Now, wasn't that lovely of you!”

Mrs. Matson shrugged. ”Yes,” she said, ”I went right to the best place for him. Miss Codman's nursery-it's absolutely reliable. You can get awfully nice children there. There's quite a long waiting-list, they tell me.”