There was a slight pause. You must have a moment in which to adjust yourself to the incredible, especially when you have not been thinking about anything so far removed.
“Shannon?” she asked in an exclamatory tone.
“Yes; it is. You can’t imagine how it looks to me after two years away from it, how it compares with the big places I have seen—dried up, sun-baked, no atmosphere, no culture.”
She said nothing. What can you say when you hear a man blaspheming the very cradle where he was rocked in infancy. Besides, the contempt seemed to include her. She was a part of it, and she loved it.
“I saw a handsome plant of some sort blooming in a tin bucket on Mrs. Flitch’s front porch the other day. That’s what I mean,” he went on.
“But what do you mean?” she asked, regarding him vaguely.
“Well, the bucket was tinware, as I said, and published on it, still in red letters, was the red label of a superior shortening.” He laughed.
“She is so fond of flowers,” Helen expounded gravely.
His eyes snickered at her. “But the bucket,” he exclaimed, “the tin bucket, the old tin bucket with the red label—with a gardenia blooming in it. Naïve, I’ll admit, but about as appropriate as sticking an ostrich plume over the kitchen sink.”
Helen made a hasty mental inventory of the Adams flower pots and thanked heaven they were correct.