“No, she wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Emery decisively. “After dancing so late nights, I want her to sleep every minute she’s not wanted somewhere. I have the responsibility of looking after her health, you know. I hope she’ll sleep now till just time to get up and dress for Marietta’s lunch-party at one o’clock.”
The father of the family frowned. “Is Marietta giving another lunch-party for Lydia? They can’t afford to do so much. Marietta’s—”
“This is a great chance for Marietta—poor girl! she hasn’t many such chances—Lydia’s carrying everything before her so, I mean.”
“How does Marietta get into the game?” asked her father obtusely.
Mrs. Emery hesitated a scarcely perceptible instant, a hesitation apparently illuminating to her husband. He laughed again, the tolerant, indifferent laugh he had for his women-folks’ goings-on. “She thinks she can go up as the tail to Lydia’s kite, does she? She’d better not be too sure. If I don’t miss my guess, Paul’ll have a word or two to say about carrying extra weight. Gosh! Marietta’s a fool some ways for a woman that has her brains.”
He stated this opinion with a detached, impersonal irresponsibility, and began to prepare himself for the plunge into the damp cold of the Endbury January. His wife preserved a dignified silence, and in the middle of a sentence of his later talk, which had again turned on his grievance about never seeing Lydia, she got up, went into the hall, and began to use the telephone for her morning shopping. Her conversation gave the impression that she was ordering veal cutlets, maidenhair ferns, wax floor-polish, chiffon ruching, and closed carriages, from one and the same invisible interlocutor, who seemed impartially unable to supply any of these needs without rather testy exhortation. Mrs. Emery was one of the women who are always well served by “tradespeople,” as she now called them, “and a good reason why,” she was wont to explain with self-gratulatory grimness.
The Judge waited, one hand on the door-knob, squaring his jaw over his muffler, and listening with a darkening face to the interminable succession of purchases. After a time he released the door-knob, loosened his muffler, and sat down heavily, his eyes fixed on his wife’s back.
After an interval, Mrs. Emery paused in the act of ringing up another number, looked over her shoulder, saw him there and inquired uneasily, “What are you waiting for? You’ll catch cold with all your things on. Isn’t Dr. Melton always telling you to be careful?”
She felt a vague resentment at his being there “after hours,” as she might have put it, so definitely had long usage accustomed her to a sense of solitary proprietorship of the house except at certain fixed and not very frequent periods. She almost felt that he was eavesdropping while she “ran her own business.” There was also his remark about Marietta and kites, unatoned for as yet. She had not forgotten that she “owed him one,” as Madeleine Hollister light-heartedly phrased the connubial balanced relationship which had come under her irreverent and keen observation. A cumulative sharpness from all these causes was in her voice as she remarked, “Didn’t I tell you that Lydia—”
Judge Emery’s voice in answer was as sharp as her own. “Look-y here, Susan, I bet you’ve ordered fifty dollars’ worth of stuff since you stood there.”