“You must do your best and look your best. You are lovely, you know.”
“Am I?” she asked, not coquettishly, but as if this was an opportunity to assure herself about something which was causing her anxiety.
“Yes, of course, you are,” he returned in a matter-of-fact tone. This was no time to get personal with his wife. He wanted her to do something and do it well.
“Wear that gown I bought you from Madame Lily’s,” he suggested.
“Oh! must I?” she exclaimed as if she asked, Would it be as bad as that?
“The very thing, and wear the necklace.”
She said she would, but what she thought was that if she must dress like this she could not stay in the kitchen and help Maria with the dinner, and Maria was not to be trusted. She was “heavy handed” when it came to salt, for example. Her chief concern was for the dinner, not herself. She always missed her cue.
Nevertheless, Shippen had the shock of his swift life when he was presented to Mrs. Cutter that evening.
The weather was very cold. A bright fire burned in the grate. A chandelier of four lights overhead left scarcely a shadow in this cheap little parlor. Everything in it glared. The white walls stared you out of countenance. The golden-oak piano turned a broadside of yellow brilliance across the flowered rug. The whatnot showed off. The spindle-back sofa fairly twinkled varnish. Inanimate things can sometimes produce the impression of tittering excitement. The furniture in this pop-eyed room seemed to be expecting company. Only the two mahogany armchairs on either side of the fireplace preserved their gravity and indifference, as if they had been born and bred to be sat in by the best people.
Shippen saw all this at a glance; at least he felt it without knowing what ailed him. Later he was to quail in a sort of artistic anguish beneath the cold, calm, crayon gaze of that excellent carpenter, the late Sam Adams, whose portrait still hung above the mantel. And he was to feel the colder, grimmer crayon eyes of the late Mrs. Mary Adams piercing him between the shoulder blades from the opposite wall. But that which riveted his attention this first moment when he entered the room with Cutter was Mrs. Cutter.