But he did. It was a package of oatmeal and a yeast-cake. He dragged them triumphantly up from his memory.
They entered the shop and found Aunt Mattie Farnham there, buying ginger cookies and potato salad and boiled ham. “My! I’m ashamed to have you Knapps catch me at this!” she protested with that Aunt Mattieish laugh of hers that meant that she wasn’t really ashamed, or anything but cheerfully ready to make fun of herself. “It’s not Evangeline Knapp who’d be buying delicatessen stuff for her family’s supper at six o’clock at night! We went out in the new Buick this afternoon.... Oh, Lester, she’s a dream, simply a dream! And we went further than we meant. You always do, you know. And of course, being me, there’s not a thing in the house to eat. I put Frank and the children to setting the table while I tore over here. Don’t you tell Evangeline on me, Lester. I tried to get her to go and take Stephen, but she wouldn’t—had biscuits to make for supper and a floor to scrub or something. She never lets things go, as I do. She’s a perfect wonder, Evangeline is, anyhow. An example to us all, I always tell ’em. After I’ve been in your house, I declare, I’m ashamed to set foot in my own!”
While the grocer wrapped up her purchases she stooped her fair smiling face towards Helen to say, “My gracious, honey, how swell we do look in our new coat! Where did Momma buy that for you?”
Helen looked down at it as if to see what coat it was, as if she had forgotten that she wore a coat. Then she said, “She made it, Mother made it, out of an old coat Gramma Houghton sent us. The collar and cuffs are off Cousin Celia’s last-winter one.”
Aunt Mattie was lost in admiration. She turned Helen around to get the effect of the back. “Well, your mother is the wonder!” she cried heartily, again. “I never saw anybody to beat her for style! Give Evangeline Knapp a gunny sack and a horse-blanket and she’ll turn you out a fifty-dollar coat, I always tell ’em. Would anybody but her have dreamed of using that blue and light green together? It makes it look positively as if it came right from Fifth Avenue. I don’t dare buy me a new hat or a suit unless Evangeline says it’s all right. You can’t fool her on style! What did you ever do, Lester Knapp, to deserve such a wife, I’d like to know.”
She laughed again, as Aunt Mattie always did, just for the sake of laughing, gave Henry and Helen each a cookie out of her paper bag, and took up her boughten salad and boughten boiled ham and went off, repeating, “Now, folks, don’t you go and give me away!”
The grocery store seemed very silent after she left. Mr. Knapp bought his yeast-cake and package of oatmeal and they went out without a word. They didn’t feel like talking any more. The children were eating fast on their cookies to finish them before they reached home.
They turned up the walk to the house in silence, stood for some time scraping the snow and mud off their shoes on the wire mat at the foot of the steps and went on their toes up to the cocoa-fiber mat in front of the door.
When they finally opened the door and stepped in, an appetizing odor of hot chocolate and something fresh out of the oven met them. Also the sound of the clock striking half-past six. Good, they were on time. It was very important to be on time. Little Stephen sat on the bottom step of the stairs, waiting for them, his face swollen and mottled, his eyes very red, his mouth clamped shut in a hard line.
“Oh, gee! I bet Stevie’s been bad again!” murmured Henry pityingly. He went quickly to his little brother and tried to toss him up. But the heavy child was too much of a weight for his thin arms. He only succeeded in giving him a great hug. Helen did this too, and laid the fresh, outdoor coolness of her cheek against the little boy’s hot face, glazed by tears. They none of them made a sound.