“I’m glad we could arrange for you to come,” said Clementine, cordially.
“Glad! My gracious, I guess I’m glad! Well! if you measured ribbon from morning till night, I guess you’d be glad to get away from it for once. Why, I measure ribbon in my dreams, from night till morning. I can’t seem to get away from that everlasting stretching out of thirty-six inches, over and over again.”
“But the ribbons are so pretty,” said Clementine, by way of being agreeable.
“Yes; when they first come in. But after a few weeks you get so tired of the patterns. My, I feel as if I could throw that Dresden sash ribbon on the floor and stamp on it, I’m so tired of seeing it! And there’s one piece of gay brocade that hits me in the eye every morning. I can’t stand that piece much longer.”
“I’ll come round some day, and buy it,” said Patty, laughing good-naturedly. “I didn’t know the ribbons were so individual to you.”
“Yes, they are. There’s one piece of light blue satin ribbon, plain and wide, that I just love. It’s a real comfort to me.”
Jenny gave a little sigh, as she thought of her favourite ribbon, and Patty looked at her in wonderment, that she should be so sensitive to colour and texture. But her taste in colours did not seem to extend to her clothes. Jenny was a pale little thing, with ashy blonde hair, and large, light blue eyes. She wore a nondescript tan-coloured dress, without tone or shape; and she had a weary, exhausted air, as if chronically tired.
Conversation was a little difficult. The four hostesses tried their best to be entertaining without being patronising, but it was not an easy task. At least, their advances were not easily received, and the guests seemed to be on the alert to resent anything that savoured of patronage. But help came from an unexpected quarter. Just at one o’clock Mrs. Greene arrived.
“My land!” she exclaimed, as she entered the room, “if this isn’t grand! I wouldn’t of missed it for a farm! You see, I waited out on the corner, till it was just one o’clock. I know enough to get to a party just on the minute. My bringin’ up was good, if I have fell off a little since. But my folks was always awful particular people,—wouldn’t even take their pie in their hands. My husband, now, he was different. He wasn’t a fool, nor he wasn’t much else. But I only had him a year, and then he up and got killed in a rolling mill. Nice man, John, but not very forth-putting. So I’ve shifted for myself ever since. Not that I’ve done so awful well. I’m slow, I am. I never was one o’ those to sew with a hot needle and a scorching thread, but I do my stent right along. But, my! how I do rattle on! You might think I don’t often go in good society. Well, I don’t! So I must make the most of this chance.”
Mrs. Greene’s chatter had been broken in upon by introductions and greetings, but that bothered her not at all. She nodded her head affably at the different ones, but kept right on talking.
So Mona was fairly obliged to interrupt her.
“Now, let us go out to luncheon,” she said, after the maid had announced it twice.
“Glad to,” said Mrs. Greene. “Oh, my land! what a pretty sight!”
She stood stock still in the doorway, and had to be urged forward, in order that the others might follow.
“Well, I didn’t know a table could look so handsome!” she went on. “My land! I s’pose it’s been thirty years since I’ve went to a real party feast, and then, I can tell you, it wasn’t much like this!”
Probably not, for Mona’s table, with the coloured electric lights blazing from the pretty Christmas tree, the soft radiance of the room, the fragrance of flowers, the exquisite table appointments, and the pretty, kindly hostesses, was a scene well worthy of praise.
Anna Gorman trembled a little as she took her seat, and sat, wide-eyed, looking almost as if in a trance of delight. Celeste Arleson was less embarrassed, as her profession took her into fine mansions and in presence of fashionable people every day.
Jenny Bisbee looked rapturous. “Oh,” she said, “Oh! I am so happy!”
The guests all looked a trifle awestruck when the first course appeared, of grapefruit, served in tall, slender ice-glasses, each with a red ribbon tied round its stem, and a sprig of holly in the bow.
“Well, did you ever!” exclaimed Mrs. Greene. “And is this the way they do things now? Well, well! It does look ’most too good to eat, but I’m ready to tackle it.”
Anna Gorman looked a little pained, as if this homely enthusiasm jarred upon her sense of fitness. But Mona said hospitably, “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Greene,—it’s here to be eaten.”
“Now, I’m free to confess, I don’t know what spoon to take,” Mrs. Greene acknowledged, looking blankly at the row of flat silver before her.
“I know,” spoke up Jenny Bisbee, eagerly; “I read it in a Sunday paper. You begin at the outside of the row, and eat in!”
“Land! are you sure to come out right, that way? S’pose you had a fork left for your ice cream!”
“We’ll risk it,” said Mona, smiling. “Let’s use this spoon at the outside, as Jenny suggests.”
The second course was clam bouillon, and after it was served, a maid passed a dish of whipped cream.
Mrs. Greene watched carefully as Mona placed a spoonful on the top of her soup, and then she exclaimed:
“Well, if that don’t beat all! What is that, might I ask?”
“Whipped cream,” said Mona. “Won’t you have some?”
“Well, I will,—as you took some. But if that ain’t the greatest! Now, just let me tell you. A friend of mine,—she has seen some high society,—she was telling me a little how to behave. And she told me of a country person she knew, who had some soup in a cup once. And he thought it was tea, and he ca’mly puts in milk and sugar! Well, he was just kerflum-mixed, that poor man, when he found it was soup! So, my friend says, says she: ‘Now, Almira, whatever you do, don’t put milk in your soup!’ And, I declare to goodness, here you’re doin’ just that very thing!”
“Well, we won’t put any sugar in,” said Mona, pleasantly; “but I think the cream improves it. You like it, don’t you, Jenny?”
“Heavenly!” said Jenny, rolling her eyes up with such a comically blissful expression that Elise nearly choked.
As Patty had agreed, the luncheon was good and substantial, rather than elaborate. The broiled chicken, dainty vegetables, and pretty salad all met the guests’ hearty approval and appreciation; and when the ice cream was served, Mrs. Greene discovered she had both a fork and a spoon at her disposal.
“Well, I never!” she observed. “Ain’t that handy, now? I s’pose you take whichever one you like.”
“Yes,” said Mona. “You see, there is strawberry sauce for the ice cream, and that makes it seem more like a pudding.”
“So it does, so it does,” agreed Mrs. Greene, “though, land knows, it ain’t much like the puddin’s I’m accustomed to. Cottage, rice, and bread is about the variety we get, in the puddin’ line. Not but what I’m mighty grateful to get those.”
“I like chocolate pudding,” said Jenny, in a low voice, and apparently with great effort. Patty knew she made the remark because she thought it her duty to join in the conversation; and she felt such heroism deserved recognition.
“So do I,” she said, smiling kindly at Jenny. “In fact, I like anything with chocolate in it.”
“So do I,” returned Jenny, a little bolder under this expressed sympathy of tastes. “Once I had a whole box of chocolate candies,—a pound box it was. I’ve got the box yet. I’m awful careful of the lace paper.”
“I often get boxes of candy,” said Celeste, unable to repress this bit of vanity. “My customers give them to me.”
“My,” said Jenny, “that must be fine. Is it grand to be a manicure?”
“I like it,” said Celeste, “because it takes me among nice people. They’re mostly good to me.”
“My ladies are nice to me, too,” observed Anna. “I only sew in nice houses. But I don’t see the ladies much. It’s different with you, Miss Arleson.”
“Well, I don’t see nice ladies,” broke in Jenny. “My, how those queens of society can snap at you! Seems ’if they blame me for everything: the stock, the price, the slow cash boys,—whatever bothers ’em, it’s all my fault.”