A good many wedding presents commenced to coming in this morning, which was a sign that the invitations got to the people all right. You often hear of things being worth their weight in silver, but there's one thing you can count on it's being true about and that is wedding invitations. You never saw such delighted people as Julius and Marcella. They were laid out on tables in the parlor and greatly admired.
"They're ours, dearest," he said, squeezing her hand right before everybody, "yours and mine! Our Lares and Penates."
This greatly impressed me and I looked it up in the back of the dictionary when I got home, which is a very useful place to find strange words. It said: "Lares et Penates, household gods," which didn't make sense, so I knew the dictionary man must have made a mistake and meant to say household goods.
"Gentle-men!" said Mammy Lou when I told the words to her, "if he thinks up such names as them for his fu'niture what will he do when he gets to his chil'en?"
This remark seemed to put an idea into her head, for Lovie, mammy's other daughter besides Dilsey, has got a pair of two little twins that have been going around for the last five years in need of a name just because Mammy Lou and Ike, their father, can't ever agree on one—a name nor anything else.
"Them's the very names for the little angels," Mammy said, washing the dinner dishes deep in thought, "for the twins bein' boys and girls and the names bein' able to accommodate therselves to ary sect proves that they're the very thing." She studied over it for a good while, I guess on account of Ike, although mammy is usually what she calls very plain-spoken with him. A plain-spoken person is one that says nasty things to your face and expects you not to get mad. When they say them behind your back they're "diplomatic." But finally she started off to name them, and, having had so much trouble already with Ike, I saw her slip her heavy-soled slippers into her pocket before she started. She stayed away a long, long time, but when she got back she held her head so high and acted so stuck-up that I just knew she had got to use both the names and the slippers.
"Did you name 'em?" I asked her, going to the kitchen to get some tea-cakes, supper being very late.
"Did I?" she answered back, cutting out the biscuits with a haughty look, "you just oughter a saw me namin' 'em!"
"Which did you name which?" I asked.
"I named the precious boy Penates, because I most know these common niggers roun' here'll shorten it to 'Peanuts' which would be hurtin' to a little girl's feelin's."