“My soul!” muttered the captain. “Where's that girl's mother? Somebody ought to tell her.”
Hungerford smiled once more. “That was her mother I was dancing with,” he said.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Daniel. It was the only comment he made. He watched the rest of the dancing in silence.
The collation followed the dancing, and Azuba and Mr. Hapgood served it, assisted by four waiters who, at Mr. Hungerford's suggestion, had been hired for the occasion. The butler's serving was done with grace and elegance, not to mention dignity. Azuba served as if the main object to be attained was to provide each guest with as much food as possible in the shortest possible time. She was arrayed in a new black gown, worn under protest, for her own idea had been to wear her Sunday dress, a vivid purple, with trimmings which, for color and variety, looked “like a patchwork tidy,” as Captain Dan expressed it. Also, under still greater protest, she wore a white apron and cap.
“I feel like my grandmother doin' dishes,” Azuba declared when Mrs. Dott brought the cap and apron to her and insisted on a dress rehearsal. “The old woman lived to be ninety-five and wore a cap for all the world like this one for thirty year. She had some excuse for wearin' it—it hid the place where her hair was thin on top. But I ain't bald and I ain't ninety-five neither. And why in the world you want me to put an apron on in the parlor, I don't see. You've been preachin' at me to leave one off till I was just rememberin' to do it, and now you want me to put it on again.”
“Not this kind of an apron, Azuba. Mrs. Black's maids wear aprons like that, and so do Mrs. Fenholtz's. It's the proper thing and I expect you to do it.”
“Humph! All right. Land knows I don't want to be improper. But I'd just like to ask you this: Does that Fenholtz hired help have to wear black clothes like this dress?”
“Yes, always.”
“Well, then I suppose I'll have to do the same, but I hope they don't feel as much like bein' in mournin' as I do. I thought this reception thing was supposed to be a good time, but when I looked at myself in the glass just now, all I could think of was the Trumet post-office draped up for President McKinley's funeral. I suppose it's style, so it'll have to be. But if Labe, my husband, should see me now, he'd have a shock, I guess. Cal'late he'd think he was dead and I'd got word of it afore he did.”
But the food was good and the guests seemed to enjoy it. Some of them seemed to enjoy Azuba, and Mr. Fenholtz was observed by the indignant Serena to laugh heartily every time the transformed maid-of-all-work addressed him.