"But _I'll_ have a car next year," she had suggested.
"You don't _need_ a car!" Bob had asserted, hotly.
"Maybe I don't," Martha had answered, softly, infuriatingly, for her
lazily lifted eyes had added, defiantly, "But I'm going to have one,
anyway!"
"If I could add another part to the garage and change that hideous
entrance so we could hide it with some--lilacs and--things, mother,
then I could change the west window of my room into a door, and have
the whole roof of the garage for a veranda of my own, with an
adjustable awning kind of over it, and some roses up the supports of
it. And how much nicer it would be in the summer to sit there
without a roof over us. We'd get all the breeze there was there,
don't you think, mammie?"
"Oh, Martha, give us a rest. Let's have some peace. There's no
reason why you should have a car, I tell you, anyway at your age."
Thus Bob received her suggestion.
"We'll have to think it all over," Emily had replied. It would have
to stop some place. Martha couldn't just be allowed to "express
herself" all over the house whenever it suited her fancy. If Bob
would only stop threatening to forbid her to use his car, maybe she
wouldn't insist so frequently on having one of her own next year.
The raspberries stimulated Martha to action, for she dressed as Eve
and Emily sat discussing the evening. She had to go and get some
flowers for her room, before her guests came, she said, departing.
And Eve began spreading those day beds into order. Emily bestirred
herself to help. She had a notion to move those beds into the middle
of the room together. But she refrained. She had to reflect that,
though Martha decorated with fury, she dusted with less zeal. In
that, too, she resembled her mother. She returned presently with her
hands full of lilacs for her red-copper bowls. She threw them down
on the bed and when Emily suggested arranging them she said, "Wait,
mother. I've 'phoned Johnnie to get me some blue ones from the
high-school garden." Emily began a faint protest, knowing Mrs.
Benton didn't allow anyone to gather the flowers of that young hedge
of hybrid lilacs which she had given to the high school. Martha
said: "Oh, I wanted one or two. Mother, we've just got to have a
place in the garden for a very late lilac like that, because it makes
the bouquets for this room." And Johnnie came in immediately. With
half a dozen great blossoms right up the stairs he walked, and into
that--no, it wasn't a bedroom, but it still seemed strange to have
him making himself at home among the bedrooms. Martha scolded him
for bringing so many branches, but she had to have at least two of
those dark purply ones. "You can see that for yourself," she
insisted to Johnnie. Emily could see it for herself. The flow of
color melted and shifted about those darkest blues as Martha lowered
one shade and pushed up another, grumbling because mignonette
couldn't be got to bloom earlier. If she had ever thought those
delphiniums would have been all crushed up that way the first dance
last night, she would have saved some for her room.
Emily had told Johnnie to hand her the pile of books that lay on the
floor beside Eve's bed. Eve, to judge from the literature with which
she surrounded herself continually, couldn't enjoy one book unless
there were ten others as good waiting at her elbow for their turn.
She came out of the dressing room while Johnnie was looking over the
books he had put on the shelf for Emily.