“No,” she replied, with cold distinctness. “I ain’t.”
There was a silence. Emarine stirred briskly. The lines grew deeper between her brows. Two red spots came into her cheeks. “I hope the rain ain’t spoilt the chrysyanthums,” she said then, with an air of ridding herself of a disagreeable subject.
Orville made no answer. He moved his feet again uneasily. Presently he said: “I expect my mother needs a black shawl, too. Seemed to me her’n looked kind o’ rusty at church Sunday. Notice it, Emarine?”
“No,” said Emarine.
“Seemed to me she was gittin’ to look offul old. Emarine”—his voice broke; he came a step nearer—“it’ll be the first Christmas dinner I ever eat without my mother.”
She drew back and looked at him. He knew the look that flashed into her eyes, and shrank from it.
“You don’t have to eat this ’n’ without ’er, Orville Parmer! You go an’ eat your dinner with your mother, ’f you want! I can get along alone. Are you goin’ to order them things? If you ain’t, just say so, an’ I’ll go an’ do ’t myself!”
He put on his hat and went without a word.
Mrs. Palmer took the saucepan from the stove and set it on the hearth. Then she sat down and leaned her cheek in the palm of her hand, and looked steadily out of the window. Her eyelids trembled closer together. Her eyes held a far-sighted look. She saw a picture; but it was not the picture of the blue reaches of sky, and the green valley cleft by its silver-blue river. She saw a kitchen, shabby, compared to her own, scantily furnished, and in it an old, white-haired woman sitting down to eat her Christmas dinner alone.
After a while she arose with an impatient sigh. “Well, I can’t help it!” she exclaimed. “If I knuckled-down to her this time, I’d have to do ’t ag’in. She might just as well get ust to ’t, first as last. I wish she hadn’t got to lookin’ so old an’ pitiful, though, a-settin’ there in front o’ us in church Sunday after Sunday. The cords stand out in her neck like well-rope, an’ her chin keeps a-quiv’rin’ so I can see Orville a-watchin’ her——”