A silence.
Then: "That'll do to tell! I bet if Johnnie Benton was here to dance with, your health would be all right!"
"Johnnie Benton?" Scorn and derision at such a suggestion. "Excuse me if I seem to yawn. Anyway, he's engaged to somebody down East."
"Who said so? You're making that up! I don't believe it."
"Nobody told me. It's likely, you know that. The way he goes round proposing to everybody."
"He never proposed to me."
"Oh, get out! He must have!"
Martha was rejoicing in her own hypocrisy. She was guzzling down the impression she made. People said it was too sweet of her to have thought of bringing old Miss Knight to the party tenderly in her car. For Miss Knight was a decrepit old primary teacher of Martha's infancy, who seldom went out, and she had beamed every minute of the afternoon upon the dancing children, and blessed Martha loudly for her kindness in bringing her, as Martha had counted on her doing. Martha had remembered the poor. The poor, now, were hard to find in that town. But Martha had sought out a family whose house had been burned recently, and bestirred even protesting Greta to help her to succor them.
"You mustn't be such a lazy selfish pig, Greta!" she had gurgled when the room was fullest of listeners. She had talked, too, cunningly of the turkey she was roasting for Christmas dinner.
"I never had a chance to roast a turkey before," she said to mothers whose daughters were known to be indifferent to cook-stoves, "but I've always wanted to. I adore making mince pies; I'm making a lot of mincemeat, all myself, to take back with me. Yes, I'm fond of cooking. I get my own dinners with Miss Curtis, my friend in Chicago. I have more time than she does. She teaches school; but, of course, now that I'm in business, I'm busier." And she would look at the neighbors simply, quietly. She even dared to say innocently to her mother, just when the gossips might be supposed to be listening: