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.
“What _is_ the 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 see _her_.”
“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 dashing into 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, _is_ aggravating 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.