Mammy gave one glance at Jean, who had returned to her seat. She had not been in this family sixty-eight years without arrogating a few prerogatives. Then, but for Mrs. Carruth’s upraised hand, Etna would have broken forth. But Jean knew her hour of reckoning would come later. Her conversational powers seemed to have suffered a reaction. Her chair was next Hadyn’s. As he returned to his place he bent low, slipped his arm about the subdued little figure, and asked in a tone which it would have been hard to resist:
“Little Sister, what did you do with that turkey?”
“Rolled it in a big towel, put it in a basket, and carried it to the Hodgesons’ with mother’s Thanksgiving compliments, when I went after the girls. They wouldn’t eat a charity turkey, but a compliment turkey was different,” was whispered back in a voice suspiciously charged with tears.
“I call you a trump!” Then in a lower tone he turned to Constance, who sat at the other side, and said: “Who gives himself with his gift, serves three.”
[CHAPTER VII—Expansion.]
The short Thanksgiving holiday ended, Eleanor returned to college and Jean to school, found Constance busier than ever in her kitchen, for the holiday season was her hardest time, and this year promised to be an exceptional one. An extra supply of candy must be made for the booth in the Arcade, as well as for those who sold her candies on commission in other towns. Then, too, an unusual number of private orders had already come in. These all meant incessant work for Constance and Mary Willing.
The first week in December she entered the kitchen where Mary was just cutting into squares great masses of chocolate caramels. She had been hard at work all the morning, and her face was flushed from her exertions.
“Oh, I’m afraid you are nearly done up,” cried Constance, contritely. “You have been working so hard ever since eight o’clock, and it is now past eleven. I am so sorry to leave all this work to you while I do the easy part.”
“Do you call it easy work to write about two dozen letters, keep track of all the orders which are pouring in now, and run accounts straight?—to say nothing of ordering our supplies. I don’t, and I’m thanking my lucky stars that I can do my share of the work with a big spoon instead of a pen,” was Mary’s cheerful reply, as she raised her arm to push back from her forehead an unruly lock of hair which fell across her eyes.
“Let me,” said Constance quickly, lifting the soft strand into place. “You are all sticky, and when one’s hands are sticky that is the time for hair to grow rampant and one’s nose to itch! I’ve been there too many times myself not to know all about it, I tell you. But that isn’t what I came downstairs to say! Do you know that this pile of letters has set me thinking, Mary? If things go on at this rate you and I can never in the world handle the business. Why, it has taken me the whole morning to look after the letters and acknowledge the orders which came by the early mail. I haven’t been able to do one single stroke in here, and now I have got to go down to South Riveredge. Charles told Mammy that we ought to have more space there for our goods, and he wished I would see Mr. Porter about it at once. He thinks we ought to rent one of the other spaces for the Christmas season, anyway, and have someone there to attend to it. What do you think? And do you know of someone we could get? You see Christmas is only three weeks off, and whatever we do we’ve got to do at once.”