“Oh, no, he won’t!” Julie hastily replied. “That is,” she stammered, flushing, “I hope he won’t.”
“Oh, Julie, you’re so young,” Aunt Sadie told her tolerantly. “I don’t know what it is about you—you ain’t really young no more, an’ you don’t exactly look young; but someway you just seem to make every one think of you as nothin’ but a child.”
It was a rather disjointed supper party. Julie had to vibrate constantly between kitchen and dining-room, serving the waffles, and Mrs. Johnson was forever jumping up to hand somebody something. Her idea of entertainment was to see that her guests were well fed, over-fed,—stuffed, in fact,—and conversation was left to struggle along as best it could. Little hopeful fragments of talk were started, but constantly shattered by the necessity for serving a fresh batch of waffles, or by her starting up to get out a glass of some new kind of preserve. Brother Seabrook tried bravely to converse with his hostess, but it was no easy matter. “Yes, yes,” she responded absently to some promising remark, “Now do have one of Julie’s hot waffles, Mr. Seabrook, they’re right fresh from the iron”; or, in sudden accusation, “Why, Mr. Seabrook, you haven’t one thing on your plate!” Valiantly as the poor man struggled to see the surface of his plate, he never saw it, for always as he politely got through one mountain of food, another avalanche descended upon it. He ate manfully, however, replying as best he might to Elizabeth’s insistent talk, and trying from time to time to drag Mr. Bixby into the stream of conversation, as a small boy, not too happy in the swimming-hole, tries to urge other tentative little boys upon the bank to “come on in.” But this Elizabeth always circumvented. Whenever her husband essayed a plunge into the talk, encouraged thereto by Brother Seabrook or in a moment of his own unaided daring, she immediately chased him into silence with some sharp retort. So for the most part he ate his supper without a word. He ate it, too, as though he were very hungry. Unfortunately he told his hostess that it was just about the best supper he ever did eat. He said it in an aside, but Elizabeth overheard and paused just long enough in something she was telling Brother Seabrook to pounce upon him with, “Now that’s a pretty thing to say, ain’t it! Like your own wife kep’ you half starved!”
After that Mr. Bixby fell out of the conversation altogether, only raising his eyes from his plate to glance from time to time at Julie as she came and went with her waffles. In her neat sprigged dress she looked soft and gentle. Her face was a little flushed; one dark strand of hair fell over her forehead, and when she turned to go back to the kitchen, he could see that there were two little ringlets that made curls at the nape of her neck.
Waffle-making was an art with Julie. In the practice of it she even forgot her usual feeling of constraint and breathlessness toward Elizabeth, and served her as eagerly as the rest. In her unconscious delight in doing a thing she loved to do and could do well, she created a content and serenity that drew Mr. Bixby’s eyes continually toward her, and also made the Reverend Mr. Seabrook, who appeared to harbor no malice for that brief episode in the church, rather absent to Elizabeth’s stream of talk. Elizabeth had come to the party intent on making an impression, but much as her elaborate talk and dashing costume thrust her into the foreground, she felt herself constantly in danger of being swept away into the background every time that Julie entered with fresh waffles.
It was the summer of 1918, and naturally most of the fitful conversation turned upon the war, although Elizabeth said flatly that she was just sick to death of the hateful business; and Aunt Sadie answered Brother Seabrook’s scraps of war news with, “Yes, yes—have some preserves?” The reverend gentleman, however, was patriotic, and would not be deflected from the subject.
“Well,” Elizabeth said, at last, making the best of it, “my husband’s liable to get his draft call most any time now. It’ll be right hard on me, but if the country needs him, I’ll have to give him, I reckon. Everybody’s got to do their bit.”
She patted her hair and sighed, basking in her own nobility.
Though Aunt Sadie tolerated Elizabeth, she was apt to flash out at her every now and again.
“You give him?” she snorted. “Humph! that sounds mighty grand, but believe me if Uncle Sam wants him, he’ll take him all right, without any giving on your part.”