"But did you tell him that you embroidered them with your own hands?"
"Yes, I told him."
"Then what did he say?"
"He pretended to be greatly surprised, and said something, but I have forgotten what it was. Mrs. Brooks is awful tiresome with her 'Yes, indeed,' isn't she? Seems to me that I'd learn something else."
"She's hardly so tiresome with her 'Yes, indeed,' as her father is with his 'Hah, hah, my dear Mr. Witherspoon,'" Henry replied.
"But he is a very old man, my son," said Mrs. Witherspoon, "and you must excuse him. I have heard that he was quite aristocratic before the war."
"Oh, he never was aristocratic," Ellen declared. "Aristocracy hampered by extreme stinginess would cut but a poor figure, I should think."
"Have we set up a grill here?" Henry asked.
Mrs. Witherspoon nodded at Ellen as if to emphasize the rebuke, and the young woman exclaimed: "Oh, I'm singled out, am I? Who said that the old man's 'hah, hah,' was tiresome? You'd better nod at your son, mother."
But she gave her son never a nod. In her sight he surely could commit no indiscretion. A moment later the mother asked: