Seven o'clock dinner at Elberta Inn was a function in spite of the dried apple pies. Miss Oleander Denton always insisted upon making of it a real dinner party. It seemed as though, for the hour, she attempted to forget that her guests were paying ones. To her black silk gown she gave a festive air by turning it in at the neck, thereby exposing her too prominent clavicles, but the effect was softened by a beautiful old lace collar and a large cameo breastpin of rare workmanship, depicting a lady in hoop skirts by a grave, over which leant a weeping willow tree. Major Denton wore a rusty dress suit and a carnation in his buttonhole. The boarders dressed or not as they chose, but as a rule they played up to Miss Oleander's role of hostess and appeared at dinner in festive raiment.
The table was set with care and taste, but Josie found the food no better than the one meal she had eaten at Mrs. Pete's in Dorfield. Mrs. Pete's cabbage and the accompanying corned beef had been excellent, although the table had been covered with a red cloth, the crockery of the thickest, unbreakable variety and a large toothpick holder the only ornament. Miss Denton always had flowers on the table and her china was what remained in the family after the administration of the hundred slaves. It did not match but it was all good, some thin porcelain with a gold band, some Canton whose blue made Josie homesick for the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop and the little breakfast set, a gift from Mary Louise.
The great difference between 126 East Centre and the Elberta Inn lay in the type of boarders. A wider gulf existed between the clientele of the two places than that between a red table cloth and a fine damask one, or Canton china and Mrs. Pete's heavy stone crockery, or a vase of roses and a toothpick holder.
Most of the boarders were permanent ones and while it was a rule of the house to resent transients, they were secretly welcome because of the added zest they gave to the humdrum of everyday life. The permanent guests of Elberta Inn knew only too well all about each other and it was a relief to have outsiders to pick on in spite of the ignominy of having to sit down to meals with persons whose antecedents might be doubtful. Elberta Inn was of the old South. The inroad of Western and Northern capital had not touched the Maison Denton. To be sure the transients who occasionally bore down upon them were often northerners or westerners but they did not represent much capital or they would have put up at a first-class hotel. This the boarders who called Elberta Inn home year in and year out well understood and so it was all transients were more or less looked down upon. They were not rich or they would not be there and they were hardly well born, since they were not born in the South. Of course they sympathized with Miss Oleander in wanting to rent her rooms and the fact that a much higher board was charged transients than permanents made transients somewhat desirable if too long intervals did not elapse between their goings and comings.
All of the foregoing Josie gathered at her first dinner. She was introduced with great eclat by her hostess. The party was seated as she came into the dining room and down one side of the table and up the other Miss Oleander called the names, each time repeating Josie as
"
Miss Blossom, Colonel Brent; Miss Blossom, Miss Kite-Smith; Miss Blossom, Mrs. Bucknow; Miss Blossom, Major Dugan; Miss Blossom, Mrs. Claiborne; Miss Blossom, Judge Tuttle; Miss Blossom, my father, Major Denton," and so forth and so on down a line of twenty.
Josie felt she had never been among so many titles in all her life. She recalled some lines from an opera of Gilbert and Sullivan's:
Note to self: These lines are indented.
"With admirals the ocean teemed