“Well, give it to me, an’ come on out in the kitching. I’ve got somethin’ to tell you.”
Emarine followed slowly, pinning a spray of lilac bloom in her bosom as she went.
“Emarine, where’s that spring balance at? I’m goin’ to weigh this coffee. If it’s one grain short, I’ll send it back a-flyin’. I’ll show ’em they can’t cheat this old hen!”
She slipped the hook under the string and lifted the coffee cautiously until the balance was level with her eyes. Then standing well back on her heels and drawing funny little wrinkles up around her mouth and eyes, she studied the figures earnestly, counting the pounds and the half-pounds down from the top. Finally she lowered it with a disappointed air. “Well,” she said, reluctantly, “it’s just it—just to a ’t.’ They’d ought to make it a leetle over, though, to allow fer the paper bag. Get the coffee-canister, Emarine.”
When the coffee had all been jiggled through a tin funnel into the canister, Mrs. Endey sat down stiffly and began polishing the funnel with a cloth. From time to time she glanced at Emarine with a kind of deprecatory mystery. At last she said—“Miss Presly spent the day down’t Mis’ Parmer’s yesterday.”
“Did she?” said Emarine, coldly; but the color came into her cheeks. “Shall I go on with the puddin’?”
“Why, you can if you want. She told me some things I don’t like.”
Emarine shattered an egg-shell on the side of a bowl and released the gold heart within.
“Miss Presly says once Mis’ Parmer had to go out an’ gether the eggs an’ shet up the chickens, so Miss Presly didn’t think there’d be any harm in just lookin’ into the drawers an’ things to see what she had. She says she’s awful short on table cloths—only got three to her name! An’ only six napkeens, an’ them coarse ’s anything! When Mis’ Parmer come back in, Miss Presly talked around a little, then she says—‘I s’pose you’re one o’ them spic an’ span kind, Mis’ Parmer, that alwus has a lot o’ extry table cloths put away in lavender.’”
Emarine set the egg-beater into the bowl and began turning it slowly.