Coffee, cheese, nuts and raisins, all appeared and disappeared, and then Winona led her sated guests out on the porch. She felt triumphantly virtuous. The dinner had been good straight through, the talk had gone smoothly, and the company seemed very happy and pleased. She sat down by Mrs. Driggs and went on talking. She was going on prosperously when Mr. Donne’s voice, from the other end of the porch, stopped Mrs. Driggs’s account of her last maid.
“How long did you say you had been married, Mrs. Merriam?” he inquired.
“Married?” echoed Winona desperately, trying to think of a way out.
She was spared giving her answer. There was a sound of footsteps and wheels within the house, and Mrs. Merriam’s wheel-chair, propelled by Florence, appeared in the doorway.
“I got back sooner than I thought I should, Frances,” said the real Mrs. Merriam’s cheerful voice. “Florence came over and told me that our friends were here, so I had her wheel me back as soon as I’d had my supper. We didn’t get home from the ride till a little while ago, and I couldn’t get here for the meal.”
Winona did not wait to hear more. There was a long open window at her back. One spring—and all that remained to tell the tale of “young Mrs. Merriam” was an overturned porch-chair and the distant sound of a tearing garment. Up in her room, pulling down her hair and slipping on her fresh middy-blouse and white skirt, Winona heard the laughter, and knew the others were being forgiven, and the whole tale told.
“Anyway!” she said to herself as she took off her glasses, shook down her hair, washed her hot face and prepared to walk downstairs and meet the family. “Anyway, that couldn’t have been a better dinner if I’d been married sixteen times!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“This paying for deceased poultry,” said Tom, “is getting monotonous. First there were those pedigreed geese up on the river, and now Henry. I know Henry never cost as much as the Janeways say he did.”
“I think we’re paying for all it cost to send him to prep school and college,” suggested Louise, who was staying over a day. “You forget that Henry was intellectual.”