Mrs. Robinson treated her daughter to a contemptuous look. "I guess I've got sense. Jane was at Mis' Stetson's, and when I came away she went along with me, and insisted that I should stop and see some lamp-lighters she'd got to copy from—those paper balls. She seemed afraid a string of those wouldn't be enough, but I told her how pretty they was, and how much you'd be pleased."
"I guess I'll think a good deal more of 'em than I will of Mis' Manning's salt and pepper." Esther was very near tears.
"Next I went to the Rogerses, and they've about concluded to give you a lamp; and they can afford to. Then that's all the places I've been, except to Mis' Lawrence's, and she"—Mrs. Robinson paused for emphasis—"she's goin' to give you a silver tea-set!"
Esther looked at her mother, her red lips apart.
"That was the first place I called, and I said pretty plain what I was gittin' at; but after I knew about the water-set, that settled what kind of weddin' we'd have."
But the next morning the world looked different. Her rheumatic foot ached, and that always affected her temper; but when they sat down to sew, the real cause of her irascibleness came out.
"Mis' Lawrence wa'n't any more civil than she need be," she remarked. "I guess she'd decided she'd got to do something, being related to Joe. She said she supposed you were expecting a good many presents; and I said no, you didn't look for many, and there were some that you'd done a good deal for that you knew better than to expect anything from. I was mad. Then she turned kind of red, and mentioned about the water-set."
And in the afternoon a young girl acquaintance added to Esther's perturbation. "I just met Susan Rogers," she confided to the other, "and she said they hated to give that lamp, but they supposed they were in for it."
Esther was not herself for some days. All her pretty dreams were blotted out, and a morbid embarrassment took hold of her; but she was roused to something like her old interest when the presents began to come in and she saw her mother's active preparations for the wedding—the more so as over the village seemed to have spread a pleasant excitement concerning the event. Presents arrived from unexpected sources, so that invitations had to be sent afterwards to the givers. Women who had never crossed the Robinson threshold came now like Hindoo gift-bearers before some deity whom they wished to propitiate. Meeting there, they exchanged droll, half-deprecating glances. Mrs. Robinson's calls had formed the subject of much laughing comment; but weddings were not common in Marshfield, and the desire to be bidden to this one was universal; it spread like an epidemic.