“That’s right,” said Berny, breaking a piece of bread. “They didn’t ask me.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” exclaimed Josh. “That beats the Dutch!”
“I didn’t believe Mrs. Ryan would do that,” said Hannah, so pained that her generally observant eye took no note of the fact that Pearl was putting her fingers in her plate. “You’re as good as her own flesh and blood, too,—her son’s wife. It’s not Christian, and I don’t understand it.”
“It’s tough,” said Josh, “that’s what it is, tough!”
“If I were you,” said Hazel with spirit, “husband or no husband, I’d never want to go inside that house or have any dealings with that crowd again. If they were down on their knees to me I’d never go near them. Just think what it would be if Josh’s mother thought herself too good to know me! I’d like to know what I’d feel about it.”
“But she wouldn’t, dearie,” said Josh placatingly. “She’d be proud to have you related to her.”
“I guess she’d better be,” said Hazel, fixing an indignant glare on her spouse. “She’d find she’d barked up the wrong tree if she wasn’t.”
Considering that Josh’s mother had been dead for twelve years and in her lifetime had been a meek and unassuming woman who let lodgings, Hazel’s proud repudiation at her possible scorn seemed a profitless wasting of fires, and Josh forthwith turned the conversation back to the ball.
“Perhaps they did send you an invitation,” he said to Berny, “and it got lost in the mails. That does happen, you know.”
Berny’s cheeks, under the faint bloom of rouge that covered them, flamed a sudden, dusky red. She had never been open with these simple relations of hers and she was not going to begin now. But she felt shame as she thought of Dominick’s humiliating quest for the invitation that was refused.