The dinner at Sabbath Valley parsonage was a good one. It was quite different from any dinner Laurie Shafton had ever eaten before. It had a taste that he hadn't imagined just plain chicken and mashed potatoes and bread and butter and coffee and cherry pie could have.
Those were things he seldom picked out from a menu, and he met them as something new and delicious, prepared in this wonderful country way.
Also the atmosphere was queer and interesting.
The minister had helped him into the dining-room, a cheery room with a bay window looking toward the church and a window box of nasturtiums in which the bees hummed and buzzed.
The girl came in and acknowledged the casual introduction of her father with a quite sophisticated nod and sat down across from him. And there was a prayer at the beginning of the meal! Just as he was about to say something graceful to the girl, there was a prayer. It was almost embarrassing. He had never seen one before like this. At a boarding school once he had experienced a thing they called “grace” which consisted in standing behind their chairs while the entire assembled hungry multitude repeated a poem of a religious nature. He remembered they used to spend their time making up parodies on it—one ran something about “this same old fish upon my plate,” and rhymed with “hate.” He stared at the lovely bowed hair of the girl across the table while it was going on, and got ready a remark calculated to draw her smiles, but the girl lifted eyes that seemed so far away he felt as though she did not see him, and he contented himself with replying to his host's question something about the part of the chicken he liked best. It was a queer home to him, it seemed so intimate. Even the chicken seemed to be a detail of their life together, perhaps because there was only one chicken, and one breast. Where he dwelt there were countless breasts, and everybody had a whole breast if he wanted it, or a whole chicken for the matter of that. Here they had to stop and ask what others liked before they chose for themselves. This analysis went queerly on in his mind while he sat waiting for his plate and wondering over the little things they were talking about. Mrs. Severn said Miss Saxon had been crying all through church, and she told her Billy had been away all night. She was awfully worried about his going with that baseball team.
A fleeting shadow passed over the girl's face:
“Billy promised me he would be there to-day,” she said thoughtfully, “something must have happened. I don't think Billy was with the baseball team—” then her eyes travelled away out the window to the distant hills, she didn't seem to see Laurence Shafton at all. It was a new experience for him. He was fairly good looking and knew it.
Who the deuce was this Billy? And what did she care about Miss Saxon crying? Did she care so much for Billy already? Would it be worth his while to make her uncare?
“Mrs. Carter wasn't out,” said Mrs. Severn as she poured coffee, “I hope she's not having more trouble with her neuralgia.”
The minister suddenly looked up from his carving: