And So They Were Married

by Florence Morse Kingsley

Elizabeth puckered her pretty forehead perplexedly; she was thinking that Grandma Carroll's unannounced visit would necessitate the hasty giving up of a gay luncheon and theatre party planned for that very afternoon. Tears of vexation sparkled in her brown eyes, as she took down the telephone receiver.

Mrs. Carroll listened to the one-sided conversation which followed without visible discomfiture. "Now that's too bad," she observed sympathetically. "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to go, and I'd have eaten my lunch right here at home. There's plenty of cooked victuals in your kitchen pantry; I saw 'em yesterday whilst I was out helping around. I suppose your hired girl cooked that roast chicken and the layer-cake and the rolls for Samuel's noonings. I hope you'll see to it, Lizzie, that he takes a good, tasty lunch to work every day. But of course you do."

Elizabeth stared. "Why, grandma," she said, "Sam doesn't carry his lunch like a common workman. He eats it at a restaurant in South Boston."

"Hum!" mused Mrs. Carroll, "I wonder if he gets anything fit to eat there? Samuel appears to have gone off in his weight considerable since I saw him last," she added, shaking her head wisely. "He needs a gentian tonic, I should say, or—something."

"You're mistaken, grandma," Elizabeth said, with an air of offended wifely dignity. "Sam isn't the least bit ill. Of course he works hard, but I should be the first to notice it if there was anything the matter with my husband."

"Care killed a cat," quoted grandma sententiously, "and you appear to be pretty much occupied with other things. Home ought to come first, my dear; I hope you aren't forgetting that."

Elizabeth's pretty face was a study; she bit her lip to keep back the petulant words that trembled on her tongue. "Evelyn is coming, grandma," she said hurriedly, "and please don't—discuss things before her."

Miss Tripp was unaffectedly surprised and, as she declared, "charmed" to see dear Mrs. Carroll in Boston. "I didn't suppose," she said, "that you ever could bring yourself to leave dear, quiet Innisfield."

Mrs. Carroll, on her part, exhibited a smiling blandness of demeanour which served as an incentive to the lively, if somewhat one-sided conversation which followed; a shrewd question now and then on the part of Mrs. Carroll eliciting numerous facts all bearing on the varied social activities of "dear Elizabeth."

"I'm positively looking forward to Lent," sighed Miss Tripp; "for really I'm worn to a fringe, but dear Elizabeth never seems tired, no matter how many engagements she has. It is a perfect delight to look at her, isn't it, dear Mrs. Carroll?"