“What boy?” inquired the man, without a suspicion that she was referring to Clifford, while he held out his hand for the heavy cream-tinted sheet which she was regarding so fondly.
“Read and see for yourself,” said Maria, with a satisfied smile, as she left it with him and went back to her work in the kitchen, while she began to con over in her mind the necessary preparations she would have to make for the important event.
“If I’m goin’, I’m goin’ in shipshape,” she asserted, with an air of decision. “For one thing, I’ll have that new black silk that I’ve be’n savin’ up for, for the last five years, and I’ll just ask Alice Eldridge to tell me how to have it made, and what I need to go with it.”
Alice Eldridge, by the way, was the minister’s daughter, a pretty, refined girl, and noted in Cedar Hill for her excellent taste.
While Maria was planning for this most important event, Squire Talford, having carefully read the communication which she had handed to him, sat with bowed head and clouded brow, absorbed in thought, while it was evident that his reflections were not of a very pleasing nature.
“Humph!” he finally ejaculated, “that proud-spirited youngster has proved himself smart, and no mistake! So he has won the salutatory! I never believed he’d get through—and he has worked his own way mostly! I confess I’m a trifle curious to know how he’ll acquit himself as an orator. I’ve half a mind to drop down to Cambridge on the sly and see what he can do; he’d never be able to pick me out in the crowd.”
He was somewhat taken aback, however, when, upon handing back the invitation and inquiring, with a sarcastic inflection, if she intended to “honor the occasion with her presence,” Maria spiritedly informed him:
“Of course I’m goin’. You don’t suppose I’d stay away, much as I think of that boy, and ’specially when he hasn’t either kith or kin to show a bit of interest in him on the proudest day of his life. And, squire”—with a little settling of her determined chin—“I’m goin’ to New Haven to do some shoppin’, and I’d like to be paid up to date, if you please.”
“Very well,” said the man shortly, and with a frown, for it always hurt him sorely to pay out any of his money unless it was for his own needs or gratification.