Stella eyed her aunt dully. God had made her, and she had a good heart: a wide-chested, cheerful, talkative lady of uncertain years, and a little taller than Maud’s husband, even when he wore his special high heels. Ted was far from being a vain man, but he didn’t like to be thought of as a little man, either, and the cobbler said he’d done that kind of work before.
Romance? thought Stella, looking unhappily about her. Where was it? She longed for charm and luxury and brilliant contacts, but her father was in the harness business.
Well—as he bent low over each sibilant spoonful of orange juice, wrinkling both eyes a great deal while he delved into the independable fruit, Frank Meade, stolid and honest and plain, wouldn’t strike any one as perhaps quite bloated with romance; and yet, abruptly, a wisp of remorse softened the daughter’s mood a little as she watched him—almost a little errant burst of spiritual vision. But it faded quickly, and she was brooding: “He might have been worth millions if he’d switched in time!” Millions, not for themselves but what they could do to one’s life. It was a distinction, though perhaps a trifle fine.
Into this sombre reverie broke the quiet voice of her sister: “Stella, dear, another cup?”
“Such delicious coffee!” endorsed Aunt Alice, who could always be depended upon to edge in something with the sly apology of the parenthesis.
Stella suddenly remembered how Irmengarde, in the chapter where they had afternoon tea somewhere in the Tyrol, waved aside the entreaties of all her admirers, declining urged dainties on every hand because the particular romance of her situation recommended an attitude of delicate ennui. Stella would have liked borrowing the technique of the Tyrolese mood, but there you were again. This wasn’t a resort in the Tyrol but just the familiar San Francisco dining room with walls of cracked cream. Her name was not Irmengarde. She was at war with life, but her cup went back to be refilled notwithstanding.
After breakfast Maud called out to her husband: “Ted, dear, I wish you’d bring home one of those new patent wringers with you tonight. The handle’s come off my old one, and the man at the repair shop said if it ever came off again he couldn’t fix it.”
“They’re grand!” echoed Aunt Alice over the rail of the banister. “I think Bert said there were ball bearings inside.”
Ted said all right, his eyes winking behind very bright-looking glasses, and Maud gave him a capable yet withal affectionate kiss. Aunt Alice, though afar off now, heard and shouted unquenchably: “Another one for me, Maud! You’re all right, Teddy! You’re a good boy! ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes....’” Her voice strode irrepressibly off in song.
Stella half consciously heard too; and, out in the kitchen, her hands in the eternal suds of dish-washing, it set her thrilling over one of the golden sentences in that chapter where Irmengarde steals out to view the ruins by moonlight.