One or two things in that evening of disillusionment stood out with painful distinctness in John Gano's memory for years. Naturally, Hattie answered "Yes" and "No" to John's mother, not as Southern youths said to their elders: "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am," or "Sir." But she also sat down to the piano without being invited, and sang a song which it was plain Mrs. Gano thought unrefined. Even John realized now that it wasn't quite the song he had imagined.
At supper, when Mrs. Gano's covert but unsparing inspection of the girl announced to her children, plain as words, that their visitor was overloaded with jewelry, John thought to mitigate the enormity of the huge frying-pan locket Hattie wore on her innocent breast by observing:
"Haven't I heard your sister say you have a daguerrotype of your father in the locket you're wearing?"
"Right you are!" she said. "I never go without it." Then to Mrs. Gano: "My! I'm awful fawnd of my paw. P'raps you'd like to see him."
Miss Fox obligingly unfastened the frying-pan, and shied it, quoit-like, down the table to her hostess.
There was a pause, a hideous silence.
"Pass me the crackers, Venus," Mrs. Gano said, presently, to Aunt Jerusha's daughter. As she took the plate she, without touching it, indicated the big bold locket. "Take that to Miss Fox," she said.
And while the maid was conveying the visitor's property back to her in the middle of a large tray, Mrs. Gano had turned to Valeria and was speaking of the morning's sermon.
Poor Miss Hattie put the finishing touch to her visit by departing without taking leave of her hostess.
"Won't you come to the parlor a moment and say good-bye to my mother?" said John, when Valeria brought their guest down-stairs into the hall, hatted and gloved, and ready to go home.