"How sweet of you, daddy!"
"Can't you see what you did?" Bob demanded, excited by her indifference. "Can't you see that if——"
"You talk as if I'd plowed up all Parker's lawn. By the way, why don't you get that bridge on Whinney's road fixed, father? Have we got to go that dusty detour all summer every time we want a game of golf, when we're only here three months?"
"Do you hear that, Emily? I try to put a little sense into her head, and she begins blaming me because that road isn't mended. Do you think the roads in this county are made for you kids? 'You haven't had that car a year,' Perkins says to me yesterday, 'and it looks like a bootleggers' express.' 'Bootleggers nothing! It's the women,' I said. 'They may be frail, but fenders crumble under them.' I remember I said to you——"
"Mother, why don't you speak up? You aren't functioning. After all, we worked all morning getting you those flowers, and this is all the thanks we get for it. I tell you, mommie, there are absolute tubs of delphiniums in Carson's cellar. Heavenly blues! They'll look cooler than anything to-night. This afternoon we're——"
"How could you expect to see anything with all that stuff piled in front of you?"
"Stuff! He calls them 'stuff.' They're all named varieties," she said, "with pedigrees behind them."
"Emily, I tell you the car looked like a florist's moving. That young fool of a Johnnie Benton riding clear home on the running board with his arms full of——"
"I wouldn't let him inside, mother." Martha spoke virtuously. "I knew you didn't want them all crushed."
"And if he hadn't seen that truck, and hollered and jumped——"