“I don’t doubt that she is,” Lenore interrupted him. “That isn’t the point. It isn’t through any attempt to assert superiority that mama is saying what she is. You know we like to be alone, Ned; we don’t want to have to include any one else in our conversation. We’re a little trio here, and we don’t need any one else. Tell the man to take away her plate.”
“Of course, if you prefer it.” Half ashamed of his reluctance, he called the negro and had the fourth plate removed. “Miss Gilbert will eat at the second table,” he explained. When the man had gone, Ned turned in appeal to Lenore. “She’ll be here in a minute. What shall I tell her?”
“Just what you told the servant—that she is to wait for the second table. Ned, you might as well make it clear in the beginning, otherwise it will be a problem all through the trip. Wait till she comes in, then tell her.”
Ned agreed, and they waited for the sound of Bess’s step on the stair. Mrs. Hardenworth’s large lips were set in a hard line: Lenore had a curious, eager expectancy. Quietly Julius served the soup, wondering at the ways of his superiors, the whites, and the long seconds grew into the minutes. Still they did not see Bess’s bright face at the door.
The soup cooled, and Mrs. Hardenworth began to grow impatient. The girl was certainly late in responding to the dinner call! And now, because she was fully aroused, she was no longer willing to accept that which would have constituted, a few minutes before, a pleasant way out of the difficulty,—the failure of the seamstress to put in an appearance. The victorious foe, at white heat, demands more than mere surrender. The two women, fully determined as to Ned’s proper course, were not willing the matter should rest.
“Send for her,” Mrs. Hardenworth urged. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t get this done and out of the way to-night, so we won’t have to be distressed about it again.” Her voice had a ring of conviction; there was no doubt that, in her own mind, she had fully justified this affront to Bess. “You’ve got to face it some time. Tell the man to ask her to come here—and then politely designate her for the second table. She’s an employee of yours, you are in real command of the boat, and it’s entirely right and proper.”
Wholly cowed, anxious to sustain the assumption of caste that their words had inferred, he called to the negro waiter. “Please tell Miss Gilbert to come here,” he ordered.
A wide grin cracking his cheeks, failing wholly to understand the real situation and assuming that “de boss” had relented in his purpose to exclude the seamstress from the first table, the colored man sped cheerfully away. Bess had already spoken kindly to him; Julius had deplored the order to remove her plate almost as a personal affront. And he failed to hear Ned’s comment that might have revealed the situation in its true light.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said weakly, after Julius had gone. “But I feel like a cad, just the same.”
Again they waited for the seamstress to come. The women were grim, forbidding. And in a moment they heard steps at the threshold.