"I had my first inoculation to-day, and my vaccination."
The minds of the three other women at the table, busy with their own small projects, refused to grasp the meaning of this statement thrust so suddenly upon them. "Vaccination?" Mrs. Payson had caught this one familiar word and now held it dully, awaiting an explanation.
"I'm going to France two weeks from to-day," said Lottie. She braced herself, one hand clutching her napkin tight as if that would sustain her.
But there was no storm. Not yet. Mrs. Carrie Payson's will refused to accept the message that her ears had flashed to her brain.
"Don't be silly, Lottie," she said. She brushed a cooky crumb from the front of her waist.
Lottie leaned forward. "Mama, don't you understand? I'm going to France. I'm going in two weeks. I've signed. It's all arranged. I'm going. In two weeks."
"Oh golly!" cried Jeannette, "how perfectly grand!" Aunt Charlotte's hand was weaving nervous palsied circles on the tablecloth, round and round. She champed her teeth as always when she was terribly excited. But Mrs. Payson sat suddenly waxen and yellow. You saw odd lines etched in her face that had not been there a moment before. She stared at Lottie. The whites of her eyes showed below the iris.
"This is a stroke," Lottie said to herself in a moment of hideous detachment. "She's going to have a stroke, and I've done it."
The red surged up into Mrs. Payson's face. "Well, you're not going, that's all. You're not going."
"Yes I am, mama," Lottie said then, quietly.