IX
Mrs. Crowe relaxed a little for the first tired minute of her day. Sunday dinner was nearly over, and though, in one way, the best meal in the week for her because all her children were sure to be at home, it was apt to be pure purgatory on a hot day, with Sheba dawdling and grumbling and Rosalind spilling pea-soup on her Sunday dress, and Aunt Elsie's deafness increased by the weather to the point of mild imbecility.
She had been a little afraid today, especially with two guests and the grandchildren rampant after church, and the extra leaf in the table that squeezed Colonel Crowe almost into the sideboard and herself nearly out of the window and made the serving of a meal a series of passings of over-hot plates from hand to hand, exposed to the piracies of Jane Ellen. But it had gone off better than she could have hoped. Colonel Crowe had not absent-mindedly begun to serve vegetables with a teaspoon, Aunt Elsie had not dissolved in tears and tottered away from the table at some imagined rudeness of Dickie's, and Jane Ellen had not once had a chance to take off her drawers.
“Ice tea!” said the avid voice of Jane Ellen in her ear. “Ice tea!”
Mrs. Crowe filled the glass and submitted a request for “please” mechanically. She wondered, rather idly, if she would spend her time in purgatory serving millions of Jane Ellens with iced tea.
“Ahem!” That was Colonel Crowe. “But you should have known us in the days of our greatness, Mrs. Severance. When I was king of Estancia—”
“I'd rather have you like this, Colonel Crowe, really. I've always wanted big families and never had one to live in—”
“Heard from Nancy recently, Oliver?” from Margaret, slightly satiric.
“Why yes, Margie, now and then. Not as often as you've heard from Stu Winthrop probably but—”