She almost started at hearing the words on her own lips, while a fleeting shadow swept across her heart.
But Serena was saying: “I’ve worked for Mrs. Moreland ever since Junior was a baby and I run in there. He’s only got a few things—mostly from his Pa and Ma—but they certainly are wonderful expensive. I never saw the beat of the watch his father give him for just a boy like him. About all the rest he had come from his mother. If the Morelands only knew it, they’re not any too popular with the folks of this town. Nobody’s going to reward ’em for their overbearing ways by heaping presents and flowers on ’em. And I had a good deal the same feeling at Mrs. Williams’. There’s an awful display of flowers and there’s a lot of fine presents, but a body don’t see such a flock of cards as there is tied to your stuff, and I think, if the truth was told, it would be that most that sour Edith got she bought for herself.”
“Oh, Serena, don’t!” said Mahala. “Mrs. Williams is a friend of yours. She’d be awfully hurt if she thought you were going about town saying things like that. Of course, I won’t repeat them, but if you said them anywhere else, some one might.”
“Well, it strikes me,” said Serena calmly as her eyes roved over the array of books and pictures, of glass and china and dainty feminine trifles of all sorts spread on the top of the big, square piano, “it strikes me that the really popular person of this town is standing before me.”
Mahala made Serena an exaggerated courtesy, and in her prettiest manner said: “I thank you, Serena. I think that’s a very nice compliment.”
Serena, looking at her clear eyes and the sweetness of her face, decided that she might venture, and so she said: “I saw Morelands sending up that awful elaborate basket, and I saw the nice one your Pa and Ma sent up, but I didn’t see where that great wheat sheaf of lilies an’ roses come from. It was terrible affecting. There wasn’t nothing in the church to begin to compare with it. I never saw grander at any funeral. Who give you that, Mahala?”
The question was point blank. Mahala had faced it for a nasty half hour against the combined forces of her father and mother slightly earlier in the day. She was steeled for it, expecting it at Serena’s entrance. She looked Serena in the eyes and laughed, a laugh altogether free of confusion and secretiveness.
“Now maybe that’s a secret I’m not telling. Maybe the card was lost, and I don’t know. Maybe any one of fifty things, whichever suits you best. I think, myself, that sheaf was the prettiest thing in the church last night.”
Serena had the wit to know that she had all the answer she was ever going to get. A quiver of confusion ran through her heart. She knew she had had no business to ask the question. She had merely ventured depending upon Mahala’s good humour, and Mahala had refused to answer, so that meant that very likely some out-of-town person, maybe some of the Bluffport boys, or some one that none of them knew anything concerning, admired Mahala.
Serena arose. She was not accustomed to giving up that easily.