Another loud blast from the horn was blown, for the bustling woman of the house was evidently getting uneasy, and ere long three or four men appeared, washing themselves from the spout of the pump, and wiping upon a coarse towel which hung upon a roller near the back door.
"I shan't eat at the same table with those creatures," said Madam
Conway, feeling intuitively that she would be invited to dinner.
"Why, grandma, yes you will, if she asks you," answered Maggie. "Only think how kind they are to us—perfect strangers!"
What else she might have said was prevented by the entrance of Betsy Jane, who informed them that dinner was ready, and with a mental groan, as she thought how she was about to be martyred, Madam Conway followed her to the dining room, where a plain, substantial farmer's meal was spread. Standing at the head of the table, with her good-humored face all in a glow, was the hostess, who, pointing Madam Conway to? chair, said: "Now set right by, and make yourselves to hum. Mebby I or to have set the table over, and I guess I should if I had anything fit to eat. Be you fond of biled victuals?" and taking it for granted they were, she loaded both Madam Conway's and Maggie's plate with every variety of vegetables used in the preparation of the dish known everywhere as "boiled victuals."
By this time the men had ranged themselves in respectful silence upon the opposite side of the table, each stealing an admiring though modest glance at Maggie; for the masculine heart, whether it beats beneath a homespun frock or coat of finest cloth, is alike susceptible to glowing, youthful beauty like that of Maggie Miller. The head of the house was absent—"had gone to town with a load of wood," so his spouse informed the ladies, at the same time pouring out a cup of tea, which she said she had tried to make strong enough to bear up an egg. "Betsy Jane," she continued, casting a deprecating glance, first at the blue sugar bowl and then at her daughter, "what possessed you to put on this brown sugar, when I told you to get crush? Have some of the apple sass? It's new—made this morning. Dew have some," she continued, as Madam Conway shook her head. "Mebby it's better than it looks. Seem's ef you wan't goin' to eat nothin'. Betsy Jane, now you're up after the crush, fetch them china sassers for the cowcumbers. Like enough she'll eat some of them."
But, affecting a headache, Madam Conway declined everything save the green tea and a Boston cracker, which, at the first mention of headache, the distressed woman had brought her. Suddenly remembering Mike, who, having fixed the carriage, was fast asleep on a wheelbarrow under the woodshed, she exclaimed: "For the land of massy, if I hain't forgot that young gentleman! Go, William, and call him this minute. Are you sick at your stomach?" she asked, turning to Madam Conway, who at the thought of eating with her drunken coachman had uttered an exclamation of disgust. "Go, Betsy Jane, and fetch the camphire, quick!"
But Madam Conway did not need the camphor, and so she said, adding that Mike was better where he was. Mike thought so too, and refused to come, whereupon the woman insisted that he must. "There was room enough," she said, "and no kind of sense in Betsy Jane's taking up the hull side of the table with them rattans. She could set nearer the young lady."
"Certainly," answered Maggie, anxious to see how the "rattans" would manage to squeeze in between herself and the table-leg, as they would have to do if they came an inch nearer.
This feat could not be done, and in attempting it Betsy Jane upset Maggie's tea upon her handsome traveling dress, eliciting from her mother the exclamation, "Betsy Jane Douglas, you allus was the blunderin'est girl!"
This little accident diverted the woman's mind from Mike, while
Madam Conway, starting at the name of Douglas, thought to herself:
"Douglas!—Douglas! I did not suppose 'twas so common a name. But then
it don't hurt George any, having these creatures bear his name."