Penelope pursed her lips. To herself she said that she must mention to her mother that “Aunt Edie” was evidently an outdoor sort, without any claim to culture. Didn’t it prove the point, when Cousin Jack’s poor little daughter was so unused to books that she was quite excited over three shelves of old-fashioned, shabby juveniles?
But to Caroline, Penelope merely said:
“Those were my books, Jacqueline, when I was your age. Your father and I often read them together on rainy days. You’ll have plenty of time to read them this summer; but you must come now, for dinner will be waiting.”
Penelope spoke crisply, coolly, and her tone made something inside Caroline curl up tight, like a sea-anemone when you touch it.
“Cousin Penelope doesn’t like me,” she told herself.
CHAPTER VIII
MUSIC IN THE TWILIGHT
In Cousin Penelope’s wake, for she did not quite dare to walk at her side, as she had walked with Aunt Eunice, Caroline went down to the dining room.
To feel as she felt on entering that cool, orderly room, with its white paint and dark paper, its old portraits and its severe, highly polished dark furniture, you would need to have lived for six months with Cousin Delia, whose dining room furniture was all of golden oak, carved in endless curves and curlicues, and who kept a piece of fly-paper on the golden oak sideboard, between the blue glass lemonade set and the plated silver cake dish.
With a sense almost of going to church, Caroline slipped into the place at the table to which Aunt Eunice smilingly motioned her. There was no cloth on the table, just drawn-work doilies of sheer white linen, and on the largest doily in the center was a crystal bowl with pale small roses. The glasses were almost as thin as soap-bubbles, and the silver was thin, and highly polished, and plain. All this Caroline had noted in the first instant, and in the second she noted with relief that there was no butler after all, only the good-humored maid, Sallie. Then she took courage, and decided that, even though there were several knives and forks and spoons at her place, she would be all right if she began at each end and worked inward.
Probably in all her life Caroline had never eaten a meal that tasted so good as that first dinner at The Chimnies. There was a clear, well-flavored soup, in a deep plate covered with Chinese figures in lettuce green and raspberry pink. With the soup were little golden-hued dice which were like glorified bread crumbs. Then there were slices of pink ham, with fat as white as marble, amber brown balls of potato, delicate small peas, a crisp salad of lettuce and ice cold cucumber, with pale, firm cheese and salty toasted crackers, and last of all little tarts of fresh strawberries, topped with whipped cream.