"I'll go," she and Sally said together—Martie, because she was in a particularly amiable mood; Sally, perhaps because old Mrs. Kelly was Joe Hawkes's grandmother.
"Well, I wish you would, girls," their mother said in her gentle, complaining voice. "She's a dear old lady—a perfect saint about getting to church in all weathers! And while Pa doesn't care much about having you so intimate with the Hawkeses, he was saying this morning that Grandma Kelly is different. She was my nurse when all four of you were born, and she certainly was interested and kind."
"We can go down about seven," Lydia said, "and not stay too long. But I suppose 'most every one in Monroe will run in to wish her many happy returns. Tom David's wife will come in from Westlake with Grandma's great-grandchildren, I guess, and all the others will be there."
"That houseful alone would kill me, let alone having the whole tribe stream in, if I were seventy-eight!" Martie observed. "But I'd just as soon go. We'll see how we feel after dinner!"
And after dinner, the night being fresh and sweet, and the meal early concluded because Malcolm was delayed in Pittsville and did not return for dinner, the three Monroes pinned on their hats, powdered their noses, and buttoned on their winter coats. Any excitement added to her present ecstatic mood was enough to give Martie the bloom of a wild rose, and Sally had her own reasons for radiance. Lydia alone, walking between them, was actuated by cool motives of duty and convention and sighed as she thought of the heat and hubbub of the Hawkes's house, and the hour that must elapse before they were back in the cool night again.
The Hawkeses had always lived in one house in Monroe. It was a large, square, cheap house near the bridge, with a bare yard kept shabby by picking chickens, and a fence of struggling pickets. Behind the house, which had not been painted in the memory of man, was a yawning barn which had never been painted at all. In the yard were various odds and ends of broken machinery and old harness; a wagon-seat, on which Grandma sometimes sat shelling beans or peeling potatoes in the summer afternoons; old brooms, old saucepans, and lengths of rope, clotted with mud. Fuchsia and rose-bushes languished in a tipsy wire enclosure near the front door.
To-night, although the yard presented a rather dismal appearance in the early winter dark, the house was bursting with hospitality and good cheer. From every one of the bare high windows raw gushes of light tunnelled the gloom outside, and although the cold outside had frosted all the glass, dim forms could be seen moving about, and voices and laughter could be heard.
Martie briskly twisted the little rotary bell-handle that was set in the centre of the front door, and before its harsh noise had died away, the door was flung open and the Monroe sisters were instantly made a part of the celebration. Hilarious members of the family and their even more hilarious friends welcomed them in; the bare hallway was swarming with young persons of both sexes; girls were coming down the stairs, girls going up, and the complementary boys lined the wall, or, grinning, looked on from the doorways.
The front room on the left, usually a bedroom, was used for a smoking room to-night; the dining-room door had been locked, but on the right two doors gave entrance to the long parlours, and here were older men, older women—Mrs. Hawkes, big, energetic, perspiring all over her delighted face; Carrie David, wild with hospitable excitement; and Joe Hawkes, Senior, a lean little eager Irishman, quite in his glory to-night. Throned on a sort of dais, in the front bay window, was Grandma Kelly, a little shrivelled beaming old woman, in a crumpled, shining, black satin gown. Her hair was scanty, showing a wide bald parting, and to hear in all the confusion she was obliged occasionally to cup one hand behind her ear, but her snapping eyes were as bright as a monkey's and her lips, over toothless gums, worked constantly with a rotary motion as she talked and laughed. On each side of her were grouped other old ladies—Mrs. Sark, Mrs. Mulkey, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs. Mussoo—her friends since the days, fifty years before, when they had crossed the plains in hooded wagons, and fought out their simple and heroic destinies on these strange western prairies.
They had borne children, comforting and caring for each other in the wilderness; they had talked of wolves and of Indians while trusting little hands caught their knees and ignorant little lips pulled at their breasts; they had known fire and flood and famine, crude offense and cruder punishment; they had seen the Indians and the buffalo go with the Missions and the sheep; they had followed the gold through its sensational rise to its sensational fall, and had held the wheat dubiously in their fingers before ever California's dark soil knew it—had wondered whether the first apple trees really might come to blossom and bear where the pines were cleared away.