Mrs. Euphemia Haven was tall, of good figure, with beautiful hair, beginning to be touched with gray, that her maid dressed more becomingly than was any other woman’s hair in Hudsonvale. She had a good complexion, with a tinge of natural pink in the cheeks and lips. Her teeth were even and white, without the defects of gold showing the handiwork of the dentist. She dressed exquisitely, Beth thought.
Mrs. Haven drove her runabout with the assurance of a boy. She had steady nerves, a cordial laugh, a smile that was charming, and knew always how to put one at his ease. She beckoned now to Beth as the latter crossed the street, crying:
“Elizabeth! Beth! Come here, please! You are just the person I must see.”
CHAPTER II
LARRY’S “COMING OUT” PARTY
Mrs. Euphemia Haven was very careful in her choice of words. Not that her diction was better or worse than most people’s; but she was very exact in saying just what she meant to say.
Instead of calling to Beth Baldwin that she “wished” to see her or “needed” to see her, she said “I must.” Behind that expression lay a rather sharp controversy between her son, Larry, and herself at the breakfast table that very morning. It was seldom that there was any friction at all between Mrs. Haven and her son, for she was a very indulgent mother and Larry was quite unspoiled, despite every chance in the world for his having been so affected.
She never interfered with his pleasures, seldom with his associates, and never balked his plans. He, on the other hand, never gave his mother a moment’s uneasiness, for she was assured that he was a Haven and would do nothing to smirch the family name.
Mrs. Haven did not blame her son for having been so friendly with the family on Bemis Street. She, herself, had loved Priscilla Lomis with all her rather narrow heart when they were young. That Priscilla had married a mechanic was her mistake; and Mrs. Euphemia had condoned that mistake for years. But now she had to think of her son’s future. There were some past associations which she felt might better be ignored by him now that he was a man. The silly plans in her own and Priscilla Baldwin’s heads when they were young married women, each with a brand new baby to think of and talk about, Mrs. Haven long since had thought best forgotten.
She feared, however, that Priscilla might have remembered. Of course, that first dear little girl baby of her old friend’s had died; but here was another girl born into the family of the mechanic——
“And goodness!” thought Mrs. Haven, as Beth Baldwin crossed the street and drew near at her call, “what a perfect little beauty she is growing to be!”