As Jean asked it, she turned to take an apron from its peg and stood so, for her mother had stopped in the act of lighting the gas stove, let the match burn to her fingertips, scorch them, and go out.
"Yes—I remember," Martha answered after a long pause.
Jean waited.
"I think, dear, I'll warm the cold meat with a brown gravy. It makes it go farther."
And Martha Norris lit another match.
Three weeks later Jean and Herrick were married. They were married in church to please Martha and for the same reason made a pretense of eating afterwards the elaborate meal she had prepared. Tom was heavier and cruder than ever and Elsie more vapid. The new baby cried incessantly and Tommykins took occasion to outdo himself as a general nuisance. Jean was thoroughly glad that Pat had not been able to come, and always remembered her wedding dinner as the worst meal through which she had ever sat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
From the chaos of chance emotions, pleasure snatched at random, Herrick settled down into the calm order of a life directed by a fixed purpose. He was going to write the novel. It was all mapped out. He and Jean had settled it through the long, peaceful afternoons of their two-weeks' honeymoon at the Portuguese ranch in the Marin Hills. Spurred by Jean's interest, Herrick had seen the thing clearly and they had worked up an excitement about it that had given Herrick an exquisite sense of power, youth, achievement. Her belief filled him with the conviction that it was all he had ever needed.
The cool little kiss that had so disappointed Herrick on the night he had asked Jean to marry him, delighted him now that he realized the almost incredible depths of Jean's shy purity and ignorance. She was like no woman he had ever known. Herrick was surprised at himself and grateful to Jean for this surprise. The most precious thing, in Herrick's scheme of life, was a new sensation and that he now had.