With a merry smile, for which there had been no scrambling, since it was shed upon them all, she had passed on to where she knew she would find her father, ringing her boot-heels, castanet fashion, as she sang lightly:
“Mary’s gone wid a coon,
Mary’s gone wid a coon;
Dere’s heaps o’ trubble on de ole man’s min’
Since Mary flit wid de coon.”
How vividly it all came up before her in this hour of quiet reverie! But her mind flitted swiftly to another scene, one that had been hanging in the background of all her thought ever since (thinking of Tom Hammond and the interrupted conversation,) she had been reminded of home and its happenings.
There had been a Donation Party for their pastor (Episcopalian Methodist) at the house of one of the members on the very night of the store scene. Madge had gone, of course. Balhang was wont to say that a Donation Party simply could not be run without her.
Sitting on that Embankment hotel balcony, with eyes fixed on the lamps, the river, the bridge, the traffic yet seeing nothing of it all, that Donation Party all came back to her. Things had been a bit stiff and formal at first, as they often are at such gatherings.
The adults sat around and talked on current topics—how much turkeys would fetch for Thanksgiving, whether it would pay best to sell them plucked or unplucked, what would folks do for cranberries for Thanksgiving, since the cranberry crop had failed that year—“An’ turkey wi’out cranberry ain’t wuth a twist o’ the tongue.”
“An’ squash,” suggested one old man. “What’s turkey wi’out squash? I’d most so soon hev only Boston” (i. e., pork and beans) “fur dinner as ter go wi’out squash wi’ turkey.”