Mary stuck a fork in a potato to ascertain if the "bone" was all gone, meanwhile shielding her face from the steam with the pot lid, held aloft in an aproned hand. Having satisfied herself that the meal was making satisfactory progress, she stepped to the door and sent a quick look across the fields, to where a streak of black smoke was scrawled along the sky.
"Beulah," she called, turning toward the interior part of the house.
"Come, Beulah, set the table. They're coming from the field."
In a moment a girl of twenty, plainly attired in a neat calico dress, entered the kitchen. She was fresh and beautiful as her mother had been that first summer in the sod house on the bench, and something in her appearance suggested that with her mother's beauty and fine sensibility she had inherited the indomitable spirit which had made John Harris one of the must prosperous farmers in the district. She moved in an easy, unconscious grace of self-reliance—a reliance that must be just a little irritating to men of old-fashioned notions concerning woman's dependence on the sterner sex—drew the long wooden table, with its covering of white oilcloth, into the centre of the kitchen, and began placing the dishes in position.
"I don't see why we can't have supper in the dining-room," she protested at length. "Before we built the new house we were always talking about how fine it would be to have a separate room, for our meals, and now we don't eat in it once a week."
"I know," said the mother, in a quiet, tired voice. "But you know what your father thinks about it. You know how down he is on style."
"It's no great style to eat in a dining-room," continued the girl. "What did he build it for? To take off his boots in? That's about all he does there, nights before he goes to bed."
"Now, Beulah, don't be unreasonable. You know we always have meals there Sundays. But your father likes the kitchen best when it ain't too hot. And besides, I can hardly take them into the dining-room while the ploughing's on. You know how greasy they are with the engine."
"They're ploughing over at Grant's, too, and when I dropped in there yesterday the dinner was set in the dining-room, and a clean white linen cloth on the table, and napkins set for the men, and I guess they use the same kind of grease as we do," persisted the girl. "And I noticed when they came in to dinner Mr. Grant and the boys, and the hired man too, all put their coats on—not their working coats, but coats they had hanging in a closet handy. It didn't take a minute, but it looked different."
"Now, Beulah, you know your father would never stand for putting on airs like that. He—"
"'Tisn't putting on airs. It's putting on clothes—clean clothes to eat in. Susy Grant never has to feel—I hate to say it, Mother—ashamed if any of her friends drop in at mealtime. And I couldn't help thinking how fine Harry looked—"