From the kitchen Serena sought information. “Whar yo’all gwine?” she demanded.
“Dey done struck. Yah–yah–yah,” laughed Ike.
“Shut you’ big mouf. Ah ain’ er astin’ you nothin’.” Serena reproved the chauffeur and then she charged into the midst of the mob. “Wot yo’all mean a leavin’ ma trays an’ dirty dishes out in dat ya’d? Ain’ you know how to wait?” Her eyes flashed her indignation. “Go git ma dishes an’ ma trays afo’e ah meks you move fas’er den you lak.”
As snow before an April sun the strike melted. The waiters departed hastily for their field of duty, leaving Mr. Jones alone with Serena. She glared at him fiercely. “How cum you mek ma waiters mad?” she demanded.
Amazed at the strange results of his diligence, Mr. Jones stood silent under her accusation.
She inspected his slight figure contemptuously. “Clea’ out,” she commanded, “afo ah lays ma han’ on you an’ breks you, boy.”
This last victim of woman’s tongue moved rapidly towards the front lawn seeking safety amidst aged women. On the way he passed a fellow sufferer.
Serena’s cutting remarks had, for Ike, turned an afternoon of pleasure and recreation into a time of humiliation. Here was music, food, agreeable company, all turned into dust by public reprimands. Yet the inextinguishable fire of hope burned in his breast. In the fullness of time, Serena might forget, allow him to enter the kitchen as one in good standing and, in the alluring company of the colored maids, to partake of refreshments. Until then he must wait. Doing this, he watched the assemblage with melancholy eyes. He considered the band futile. It played no jazz. In an unhappy hour, tobacco brings solace to man. Ike produced a cigarette. Lighting it, he puffed nervously, suspecting the use of the weed in this haunt of aged women to be taboo. Happy laughter arose in the kitchen easily identified as the hearty tones of Serena, amused, a favorable augury to the courtier cooling his heels in the ante room. Casting down his cigarette, Ike turned to reconnoiter. The butt dropped beneath the porch into some ancient leaves, damp but inflammable.
The leaves ignited and smouldered. Fanned by a gentle breeze the fire grew into a burning which produced much smoke and little flame.
Upon the porch sat Mrs. Comfort Bean. Life to her was an open book. She had survived three husbands. The first, a drunkard, had drowned, not in rum, but in the river into which he had the misfortune to fall while returning home from a convivial evening enjoyed with other gay lads at the village tavern. The second, a gambler, was shot in an altercation over the ill-timed presence of five aces in a card game. The third, a fragile thing, had faded like a flower. Mrs. Bean had neither regrets for, nor fear of, man. She knew him too well. She had come to anchor in the Lucinda Home like a storm ridden ship seeking safe harbor after a stormy passage. Here lay a peace the like of which she had never known.