The two nondescript hired men had taken their places, slipping into their chairs silently and apologetically. David Nash had changed his blue work shirt and “jeans” trousers for a white shirt, dark blue polka-dotted tie, and a well-fitting but inexpensive suit of brown homespun. Sally, squeezed between the vague little old grandmother and the vacant-eyed half-wit, beyond whom the two hired men sat, found herself directly across from David Nash, beside whom Pearl Carson sat, her chair drawn more closely than necessary.
“My, you look grand, Davie!” Pearl confided in a low, artificially sweet voice. “My cold’s lots better. Papa’ll let us drive in to the city to the movies if you ask him real nice.”
It was then that Sally Ford, who had experienced so many new emotions that day, felt a pang that made every other heartache seem mild by comparison. And two girls, one a girl alone in the world, the other pampered and adored by her family, held their breath as they awaited David Nash’s reply.
“Sorry, but I can’t tonight,” David Nash answered Pearl Carson’s invitation courteously but firmly. “It would be ’way after nine when we got to town, and we wouldn’t get back until nearly midnight—no hours for a farm hand to be keeping. Besides, I’ve got to study, long as I can keep awake.”
“You’re always studying when I want you to take me somewhere,” Pearl pouted. “I don’t see why you can’t forget college during your summer vacation. Go get some more hot biscuits, Sally,” she added sharply.
Except for Pearl’s chatter and David’s brief, courteous replies, the meal was eaten in silence, the hungry farmer and his hired men hunching over their food, wolfing it, disposing of such vast quantities of fried steak, vegetables, hot biscuits, home-made pickles, preserves, pie and coffee that Sally was kept running between kitchen and dining room to replenish bowls and plates from the food kept warming on the stove. In spite of her own hunger she ate little, restrained by timidity, but after her twelve years of orphanage diet the meal seemed like a banquet to her.
No one spoke to her, except Mrs. Carson and Pearl, to send her on trips to the kitchen, but it did not occur to her to feel slighted. It was less embarrassing to be ignored than to be plied with questions. Sometimes she raised her fluttering eyelids to steal a quick glance at David Nash, and every glance deepened her joy that he was there, that he sat at the same table with her, ate the same food, some of which she had cooked. His superiority to the others at that table was so strikingly evident that he seemed god-like to her. His pride, his poise, his golden, masculine beauty, his strength, his evident breeding, his ambition, formed such a contrast to the qualities of the orphaned boys she had known that it did not occur to her to hope that he would notice her. But once when her blue eyes stole a fleeting glimpse of his face she was startled to see that his eyes were regarding her soberly, sympathetically.
He smiled—a brief flash of light in his eyes, an upward curl to his well-cut lips. She was so covered with a happy confusion that she did not hear Mrs. Carson’s harsh nasal voice commanding her to bring more butter from the cellar until the farmer’s wife uttered her order a second time.
In spite of the prodigious amount of food eaten, the meal was quickly over. It was not half-past eight when Clem Carson scraped back his chair, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve.
“Now, Sally, I’ll leave you to clear the table and wash up,” Mrs. Carson said briskly. “I’ve got to measure and sugar my blackberries for tomorrow’s jam-making. A farmer’s wife can’t take Sunday off this time o’ year, and have fruit spoil on her hands.”