They had a merry time at that meal. Molly told her husband why his prize pupils had cut his lectures and all others that morning, and how she had almost passed a steam roller over them in form of the library sofa.
“We were terribly afraid we would offend her,” explained Thelma, “but she was dear to us.”
“Offend me! Why, I can’t think of anything in all my life that has ever happened to me that has touched me more. I don’t see how you ever thought of doing anything so nice.”
“Thelma and Jo did all the dirty work,” declared Billie.
“Dirty work, indeed! You looked as though you had used yourself to wipe down the walls with,” laughed Jo.
“Well, anyhow, when that snippy Miss Fern comes again, giving her perfunctory pokes at the baby and looking at the cobwebs until nobody can help seeing them, I bet she won’t find anything to turn up her nose at. I’d like to use her to clean the walls with. If there is anything I hate it is any one who is the pink of perfection in her own eyes. We were having such a cozy time until she lit on us with her dove-colored effects. Who cared whether there were cobwebs or not?”
“Did Miss Fern speak of the cobwebs?” asked Edwin, while the others sat around in frozen horror, remembering that she was his cousin and that he was evidently very fond of her.
“Oh, no, she didn’t open her lips; she just pursed them up and stared at the corner. Of course, she had already given her dig about Molly’s surely not having time to write and attend to her house, too; and then when she fixed her eyes on that Irishman’s curtain we all knew what she was thinking, and that she wanted us to know it, just as well as though she had spoken it and then written it and then had it put on the minutes.… What’s the matter?… Oh, Heavens! What have I done?… Oh, Professor Green! She is your cousin! Please, please forgive me,” and Billie clasped her hands in entreaty.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said the professor with a twinkle. “Go as far as you like. If the ladies have such open minds that he who runs may read, and they think disagreeable things about my wife, why, they deserve to be used for house cleaning purposes, have the floor wiped up with them and what not.”