33

MARCIA AND FLORRIE WERE forbidden to visit Lena at Aunt Lois’s. Their stepmother said if Lena wanted to see them she could come and call on them, and, for that matter, just let that young lady show her face in the door. Setting the whole town against her own folks, causing talk, and even ruining people’s confidence in her own father, so that only this very day Mr. Friend had called in an undertaker from Lesterville to attend his sister’s passing. That was the sort of thing your independent young ladies could do to their own fathers. She was not saying anything, Mrs. Willard added, about the damage done to her good name by the situation; she was used to it. Stories got back to her, and she knew exactly whom to blame for not being invited to join the new Social Club. Her brother Vance had obligingly told her that the town gossip was that the Willards expected to be invited places but never returned hospitality, they were so afraid of someone dirtying up their dishes and upholstery. Well, anyone with half an eye knew who started that talk, and the somebody was right in the family, or was till she saw fit to run away to an aunt who had as good as said she was through looking after other people’s children. No, declared Mrs. Willard, she would not lift a finger to bring Lena back to her proper home, and if her father tried to do so, she, Idah Hawkins Willard, would pack up and go straight back to Daleport, taking Minelda with her and the household linen which was all her personal property, proved by her initials. Lena’s adventure and triumphal return under the enemy’s flag seemed to have unleashed a whole horde of venomous thoughts in her stepmother, for she ranted at the table, fixing a glassy oyster-colored eye on first Florrie, then Marcia, and muttering angry monologues around her work, relieving herself of a perfect mint of bitterness, scathing memories of all the family traits—Marcia’s sarcastic silences, Florrie’s pouting face, and Lena’s brazenness.

“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,” she said, shaking a knobby red forefinger at Marcia, “if somebody right in this family didn’t tell the whole town that I’m not a good housekeeper. Yes, sir, I’ll bet neighbors down the street whisper behind my back, ‘There goes a woman that sweeps the dirt into closets.’ I’d like them to step in here and I’d show ’em every inch of the house, clean as a whistle, except when you children are around.”

She took care to say nothing about Papa, for she was respectful of his temper and not a little afraid he might bolt out of her life forever. When her patience was too tried with him, she shut her jaw tightly, lips white under compression, and she was deeply hurt that this visible effort at self-control irritated rather than pleased Papa. She talked so much about Lena insulting her own father by not even coming to see him that Papa was reluctantly obliged to confess that Aunt Lois and Lena had come in the store, and they had talked over the whole matter. As might have been expected, he took the position of the whole arrangement being his idea.