“Yes, I know that,” said Letitia; “but we thought it would be better to buy it straight from you; that—perhaps—it—perhaps it would save time and trouble.”
“I don’t see how it could do that. This part of town is a long distance out of everybody’s way.”
“Yes, of course it is,” the other agreed eagerly; then, with a sudden happy inspiration, “but I thought you might have a larger variety here—that you might have a good many different kinds on hand. I don’t want all the same sort.”
Viola rose and went to the door that led to the dining-room. Her resentment was not more obvious than her embarrassment. There was something tremulous in the expression of her face that gave Letitia a wretched feeling that only pride enabled her to keep back her tears.
“I have just the same here that I have at the Exchange,” she said, opening the doors.
The visitor followed her. In the gray of the afternoon the long room, with its tiers of plants and its bare sideboard and mantelpiece, looked even colder and drearier than the drawing-room. Viola opened a cupboard and indicated the lines of glass jars standing on the shelves. She tried to be businesslike, and told their contents and prices, but her voice betrayed her. Letitia, listening to her and staring at the Chinese cracker-jar that was the sole adornment of the sideboard, suddenly felt sick with disgust at herself for intruding, at her sister, at John Gault.
As Viola’s voice went on,—“These are apricots; they’re fifty cents. Those on that shelf are strawberry and raspberry; they are only thirty,”—Letitia’s shame and indignation worked up to a climax and a resultant resolution.
She took up one of the glasses and, looking at the legend written in neat script on the paper top, said:
“I think I ought to tell you how I happened to come here. It’s really a secret and you mustn’t tell. What I said at first was not quite the case. No one at our house knows anything about this but me. I’m going to buy these preserves for my brother-in-law and tell him I made them. I’m going to fool him. Do you understand? It’s just a little joke.”
Letitia delivered herself of this amazing effort at invention with admirable composure, for it was the first elaborate and important falsehood she had ever told in her life. Viola, turning from her contemplation of the shelves, looked at her, relieved but not quite comprehending.