CHAPTER XXI.A SLIGHT ALTERCATION.
“My dear,” said Smith, looking around the table as if he missed something, “have you nothing better than water to offer Mrs. Carter, and this the first time she has honored us?”
Mrs. Smith looked around in some bewilderment, then answered with a deprecatory glance at her friend.
“The kettle was just boiling, and its likely that Kate Gorman is drawing the tea now—Oolong of the very best. Smith, you do not suppose I should offer Mrs. Carter anything less?”
“Champagne,” answered Smith, throwing out his chest with a swell of hospitable importance, “on ice and plenty of it. I’m astonished at you, Mrs. Smith; that you did not think of it.”
“But I—I didn’t think; I didn’t know as you’d like us to break into a basket,” cried Mrs. Smith, so eager to exculpate herself, that she grew red in the face.
“As if we didn’t break into baskets every day of our lives,” answered the grocer, looking severely at his wife. Then turning toward his guest, he observed that Mrs. Smith, he was sorry to say, didn’t meet prosperity with the air and grace that must make his friend Carter proud of the wife he had married, who seemed capable of filling any position.
“Oh, Smith!” pleaded the hostess, with tears in her eyes, “sometimes I think you don’t care how much you hurt my feelings!”
“But he don’t mean it,” interposed Mrs. Carter, “it’s all because he wants to be hospitable.” Here the good woman drew a deep breath and flushed happily, feeling that she had at last matched her host in elaborate English. “But there is no need of it. I’m just sick and tired of champagne. A good cup of tea is worth a dozen bottles, and here it comes steaming hot.”
“In that Britannia tea-pot, too,” muttered Smith, “as if we had no silver in the house!”
“I’m sure the spoons are all here, they were counted only this morning.”
Smith, for secret reasons of his own, did not press the question of silver, and a cry from the next room saved him from the necessity.
“That child shrieking like mad again—upon my word, Mrs. Smith, we must discharge the nurse. She is really incompus—that is, incomp——”
Fortunately for the grocer, who never could have fought his way through the word he was toiling at, Jerusha Maria renewed her shrieks with appalling vigor, and Mrs. Smith rushed into the next room.
James had been doing his best to appease the infant’s wrath, which had been kindled by his persistent refusal to let her run her hand into the round holes which Kate Gorman had left open in the stove, when she took the tea kettle off.
A dive into the red hot coals underneath had been ruthlessly frustrated; hence the shrieks of rage which had brought the mother into the midst of the fray. Goaded out of her usual good-temper before, she flamed up furiously now, snatching the young lady from the hold James was striving desperately to keep upon her. Mrs. Smith turned upon him.
“Do you want to kill the child before my eyes?” she demanded, pulling down Jerusha Maria’s frock with a jerk, “as if I hadn’t trouble enough without you setting in!” Before the lad could answer, or attempt to defend himself, Mrs. Smith sailed out of the room, smothering the child’s wrath by a fiercer embrace than she was conscious of.
“Whatisthe matter?” cried Mrs. Carter, dropping her knife and fork, “poor little darling! who has been ’busing it?”
Mr. Smith was rather disturbed by the cloud on his wife’s face, and held out his arms in an abject, deprecating way; but the indignant woman turned her back upon him, and took her own chair, with majestic wrath.
“No, Mr. Smith, I’m not that helpless that I can’t take care of my own child.”
“But the tea. I thought you might——”
Here Mrs. Smith broke off the speech over which her husband faltered.
“No I mightn’t; it won’t be the first time I’ve poured out tea with a baby in my arms!”
“And a nice picter she makes,” said Mrs. Carter, “my brother never sees a woman holding a baby like that but he calls her a madonner at once. I only wish he could seeher.”
“I wish he could—only when she’s a trifle more like herself,” muttered Smith.
Mrs. Smith did not hear this cautious aside, but holding Jerusha Maria on her left arm, poured out the tea with her right hand, holding the Brittannia pot high up, and doing the honors with a dash. Smith took this as defiance, and withered under it.
“Dear me, what is that?” exclaimed Mrs. Carter, listening to a sound of suppressed sobs that came from the next room. “Somebody crying, I do believe.”
Mrs. Smith suspended the amber stream that was dashinginto one of her best china cups, and listened. Sure enough, suppressed sobs broke from the other room, that smote her to the heart. She sat down the tea-pot, gathered up Jerusha Maria, and went into the kitchen. There she found James Laurence sitting on a chair, with both arms flung out on the table, trying his very best to smother the sound of his own uncontrollable mortification and grief.
“Why! James, my boy; what are you crying about?”
The lad lifted up his head, and hurriedly wiped the tears from his eyes.
“I—I wasn’t crying much!” he answered, choking back his tears bravely. “Only—only I try so hard to do everything!”
“I know you do. There never was a better boy. Jerusha Maria, the little darling,isaggravating sometimes. What did she want then?”
“Only to put her two hands into the fire.”
“You little tyke!” exclaimed the mother, giving a slight shake and then an appeasing kiss to the child in her arms, “and I was cross as fury because he wouldn’t let her do it. There, there, James; never mind what I said. Of course I didn’t mean it. You haven’t a better friend in the world than I am.”
“I know that, how can I forget it? nothing else could have brought me down to crying like a baby. The first cross word brought all your goodness to me, and our people right before me, and I felt like—like a wretch.”
“A wretch! you are nothing of the kind, Jimmy. Don’t think that of yourself—and I haven’t been good to you a bit more than you deserve. Here, now, take Jerusha Maria. She wants to kiss you dreadfully. If she wants to put her hands in the fire, you may—yes, just on this occasion, I think you may shake her a little—not enough to make her teeth chatter, though, because you see they are new and tender yet.”
“I thought you would never trust her with me again,” said James, holding out his arms and smiling, though his thick eyelashes were still wet.
“Trust her with you! there, what does that seem like?” cried Mrs. Smith, putting the child into those outstretched arms, and patting both boy and child into harmony, while her own angry passions gave place to a tender sort of penitence, which extended even to Smith.
“Now, James, take good care of her while I go in and pour out the tea, for I’m afraid its getting cold.”
She did go in, beaming between tears and smiles, like an April morning; and performed the honors of her table beautifully, putting two lumps of sugar in her husband’s cup with a shy look of concession, which did more to brighten his face than the best bar soap had done.