"If I could add another part to the garage and change that hideous entrance so we could hide it with some—lilacs and—things, mother, then I could change the west window of my room into a door, and have the whole roof of the garage for a veranda of my own, with an adjustable awning kind of over it, and some roses up the supports of it. And how much nicer it would be in the summer to sit there without a roof over us. We'd get all the breeze there was there, don't you think, mammie?"
"Oh, Martha, give us a rest. Let's have some peace. There's no reason why you should have a car, I tell you, anyway at your age." Thus Bob received her suggestion.
"We'll have to think it all over," Emily had replied. It would have to stop some place. Martha couldn't just be allowed to "express herself" all over the house whenever it suited her fancy. If Bob would only stop threatening to forbid her to use his car, maybe she wouldn't insist so frequently on having one of her own next year.
The raspberries stimulated Martha to action, for she dressed as Eve and Emily sat discussing the evening. She had to go and get some flowers for her room, before her guests came, she said, departing. And Eve began spreading those day beds into order. Emily bestirred herself to help. She had a notion to move those beds into the middle of the room together. But she refrained. She had to reflect that, though Martha decorated with fury, she dusted with less zeal. In that, too, she resembled her mother. She returned presently with her hands full of lilacs for her red-copper bowls. She threw them down on the bed and when Emily suggested arranging them she said, "Wait, mother. I've 'phoned Johnnie to get me some blue ones from the high-school garden." Emily began a faint protest, knowing Mrs. Benton didn't allow anyone to gather the flowers of that young hedge of hybrid lilacs which she had given to the high school. Martha said: "Oh, I wanted one or two. Mother, we've just got to have a place in the garden for a very late lilac like that, because it makes the bouquets for this room." And Johnnie came in immediately. With half a dozen great blossoms right up the stairs he walked, and into that—no, it wasn't a bedroom, but it still seemed strange to have him making himself at home among the bedrooms. Martha scolded him for bringing so many branches, but she had to have at least two of those dark purply ones. "You can see that for yourself," she insisted to Johnnie. Emily could see it for herself. The flow of color melted and shifted about those darkest blues as Martha lowered one shade and pushed up another, grumbling because mignonette couldn't be got to bloom earlier. If she had ever thought those delphiniums would have been all crushed up that way the first dance last night, she would have saved some for her room.
Emily had told Johnnie to hand her the pile of books that lay on the floor beside Eve's bed. Eve, to judge from the literature with which she surrounded herself continually, couldn't enjoy one book unless there were ten others as good waiting at her elbow for their turn. She came out of the dressing room while Johnnie was looking over the books he had put on the shelf for Emily.
He said, "Hello! You still here?"
"You can't say anything. You're here again."
"I was invited. I was 'phoned for."
"But I'm leaving soon, and that's more than you're likely to do."
"I'm expecting to be kicked out any minute," he replied, looking at Emily. "Nobody appreciates me here. Is this any good?" he asked, carelessly fingering a book.