“You may be willing to take that child out again; I’m not,” he replied severely.
A bright idea struck Elizabeth’s imagination after she had gone to bed that night. Why not ask her own family, the Chamberlains, Aunt Susan’s, and Luther Hansen’s to a Thanksgiving dinner? She was so elated by the idea that she could hardly get to sleep at all, and before she could settle herself to rest she had killed in her imagination the half dozen or more turkeys she had raised that season. A big dinner given to those who could act as mouthpieces would silence a lot of talk; also, it would take away a certain questioning look the girl feared in Luther’s and Aunt Susan’s eyes. The latter was the sorest point of her married life, and the conviction that they were thinking much worse things than were true did not make her any more comfortable. All Sunday she planned, and Sunday night went to bed with the first secret thought she had ever harboured from her husband’s knowledge.
Mrs. Hunter entered into the plan with zest when on Monday afternoon it became necessary to tell her. She had begun to love her son’s wife in spite of her family history. Had Elizabeth known how to manage it she could have made of John’s mother a comfortable ally, but Elizabeth, with characteristic straightforwardness, sought no alliance except the natural one with her husband. The two women planned the articles to be served in the dinner, and then turned to the discussion of other preparations about the house. Elizabeth was proud of the home of which she was a part, but her strength was limited since baby’s coming, and after looking about her critically decided that there would be no necessity for any more cleaning than the regular weekly amount.
“We’ll have to get the cleaning done on Wednesday instead of Friday, but I think that will be all that will be needed. The carpets were put down fresh the week before you came home, and I don’t intend to take them up again till spring.”
“I think so,” Mrs. Hunter agreed, “but You’ll have to have the curtains in the dining room washed, and the tidies and pillow-shams done up fresh.”
“Now, mother!” Elizabeth exclaimed, “don’t begin to lay out work I can’t get done. The tidies are not hard, and I could do the shams, but those curtains are not to be thought of. I’d be so tired if I had to go to work and wash all that, after the washing I put on the line to-day, that I just wouldn’t be able to get the dinner on the table Thursday. Talking about the dinner, I think we’d better have two turkeys. I can roast two by putting them in the one big pan.”
Mrs. Hunter was willing that the younger woman should prove her talent as a cook, but she planned to take some of the necessary things upon her own shoulders, and to take her son into her schemes for brightening things up a bit. Accordingly, the next morning she asked John to help her take the curtains down.
Elizabeth had been so full of her own plans that she had forgotten to tell John’s mother that she intended to keep them secret till she had all her preparations made. The next morning when she heard the thud of some one stepping down from a chair, and her husband say: “There you are! How do you happen to be taking the curtains down at this time of the week?” she realized as she had never done before how much afraid of him she really was, for her pulses bounded, and her ears boomed like cannon, long before John had time to appear in the door to inquire who was coming, and why they were to do so.
With a look very much like guilt, Elizabeth told over the names of her proposed guests, but with Mrs. Hunter in the next room she could not tell him why it meant so much to her to ask these people to dine with them.