"She's minding as she usually does!" Bob commented.
"Why didn't you stay at the house?"
"They didn't seem to want me. Let's go home, Emily. Cut out the rest of it."
"No. I'm staying to-night until the end. We all are."
They were home again, finally, towards morning, sinking down deeply into the living-room cushions, spreading themselves out, breathing out great sighs of contentment. Emily, on the sofa, was adjusting hairpins in the coils of her brown hair. Eve sat beside her, resting in the position she had fallen into, her legs stretched out, her skirts up to her knees, her thin arms extended limply, with dark little frail-looking shadows beneath her eyes. Martha had paused to adjust her color before the hall mirror, and then seated herself, fresh as a morning flower, erect in an easy chair, her hands crossed in her lap, her shoulders tilted slightly, light from the hall on the smoothness of her black hair, dreaming, slight, detached. When her father, who had insisted on going to the kitchen to make lemonade, called out to Emily to know where the sugar had been put, Martha, realizing, as it were, the group, joined them without excitement.
"Sit still, Eve. Don't go and get it for him. It's sitting just where it has sat ever since I was born, and he can't help seeing it. Well, anyway, you ought to be content, mother. It's really your hall, and everyone knows it. Where'd Mrs. Benton been, everybody wants to know, if it hadn't been for you? Johnnie's just like her. He makes me tired. He went about saying he'd got all that crowd there by his old posters. I told him it would have been a lot nicer party if he hadn't got so many to come."
Bob came in just then, Martha's prophecy having been fulfilled about the sugar. He heard Eve's remark: "I think the Legion was by far the most interesting man there. I offered to dance with him. He takes himself seriously, of course."
Bob was feeling facetious.
"You needn't set your heart on that man, Eve. What he wants is a wife that'll do the midnight milking. Yes, midnight! Didn't you even know the farmers around here milk four times a day? To get more milk, of course. Twice at twelve, and twice at six. That's the kind he is. And say, Martha, can't you get a single man to lead around? Eve's sister will be pulling your hair the next thing you know."
Emily spoke up hastily.