After the speech and "appropriate instrumental music by the band," which consisted of a drum and a bass-viol, the people dispersed to amuse themselves as they saw fit, till dinner should be announced.
Mrs. Dodson, as "Table Committee," was disposed to magnify her office. She kept the Deacon standing guard over her basket till nearly all the rest were emptied, having reserved conspicuous places on the table for her goodies. Taking advantage of her rival's presence, smiling sweetly, she said as she opened the basket, "Mis' Pogue, your vittles look so nice, I'm real 'shamed to bring mine out at all."
"But all the while I knew she was proud as Lucifer over 'em, and thought she'd throw me quite in the shade," Mrs. Pogue told her next neighbor that afternoon. "Her big cards of rusk did look nice, but her mince-pies had slipped over into the custards, and they had dripped onto her cake so it looked just awful! and that red-headed Sneeze had squeezed her jelly-cake into flap-jacks, most likely by settin' on the basket. I never see anybody so cut up in my life; her face was redder than a beet."
And Mrs. Dodson said to the Deacon that night, "I did feel despritly morterfied over my squashed vittles, with Mis' Pogue a-lookin' on with all her eyes."
But when "the orator of the day" ate of her rusk, and said, "Mrs. Dodson, these rusk have a peculiar taste, just such as those my dead mother used to make for me when I was a boy, and I want you to give me the recipe for my wife," and he took it down in his note-book, there was full compensation for all her trials.
When all had eaten all they could, the young folk and children swung, played ball, or "chased the squirrel" with the delightful penalty of kissing it when caught, or rambled about at will, while the mothers gathered the dishes together, and exchanged recipes and confidential remarks on somebody's cookin'.
By four o'clock the babies were fretful; children of Bubby's age complained that their shoes and clothes were too tight; somebody suggested going home. In vain the young people protested—an hour from that time the grounds were deserted; the lumber of the stage, made sacred by such oratory, had been gathered up with the seats and tables, and where so much of life had been, all was silence.
A neighbor's hired man was riding home with the Dodsons, but as Mrs. Dodson did not mind him, she at once began to congratulate her husband on his maiden speech. "Cappen Buzwell said you made the best oration there was made to-day, Deacon. Did you pay 'tention, Sneeze, an' hear what he said 'bout your father's speakin'?"
The Deacon modestly put in a faint, "Now, mother, don't," but she interrupted him: "Yis I shall, for it's so, father, an' I'm goin' to say my say. Besides, he told me, with tears in his eyes, that my rusk tasted just like his dead mother's. But ef you'd only seen him tryin' to eat one o' Mis' Pogue's doughnuts as if they was real good, when I could see they was half chokin' of him!"
"That there man from town did make a purty considerable speech," said the Deacon; "not so hefty as some I've heard, but real instructing. It made me feel as though I wanted to fight somebody—purty much as I used to when I was a boy, and heard my father tell how he fit in the war of eighteen hundred and twelve, and his grandsir in the Revolutionary war."