III
In November, when the Forge house was furnished after some of the most gorgeous and least expensive plans in House Beautiful, Milly and Nathan sent my wife and self an invitation to “come up some night and have dinner.” Mary Ann had made a wry face. But for Nathan’s sake—with whose vicissitudes she had become more or less acquainted—she finally consented.
Milly had acquired a certain middle-class pride in her establishment by this time. But it was the narrow, pathetic, provincial, poorly bred sort of pride which is ofttimes the worst vulgarity, since it admits a knowledge of the existence of etiquette but refuses to reason it out or work out the finesse of detail which makes living on a certain well-mannered, soft-toned, fine-grained plane an existence of beauty and a joy forever.
Milly’s idea of serving a perfect meal was bulk—attuned to brilliance. But in the fine epicurean points of housewifery, she was as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. She was careful to procure a three-dollar roast, cook it to the best of her ability (and Farmers Cook Book) bedeck it with pretty garnishes, and,—let it set around somewhere until it was clammy and greasy as cold-storage goose and about as delectable. She worked hard to get the appropriate flowers for a centerpiece and forgot the butter plates. She would spend half an afternoon preparing a lavish dessert, and by the time it came to the table the hour was so late and so much that was over-hearty had gone before, that her guests could only nibble at it. Then she accused them of not liking it or finding something the matter with it. She wept angrily when she was finally alone and declared “she wouldn’t get up another feed for nobody” if the whole world starved. Poor Milly! It was a hectic thing,—Trying to Be Somebody!
Well, Mary Ann and I went up to Nathan’s. Little Mary, their child, was about six years of age at the time, a red-cheeked, obstreperous little bumpkin who meant well enough but never knew exactly what it was she was supposed to mean. Immediately we got into the house, Milly and her child viewed us as “company” and acquired that same old agonizing woodenness of the lowly-born known as “remembering their manners.”
Milly came to greet us cordially enough, then excused herself to oversee preparations for her dinner in the kitchen. Nathan led us into the living room. Through the archway into the dining room I could not help noting a profusion of white linen, silver, cut glass and flowers. But the savor of the forthcoming meal was strong through the house, along with something which has scorched acridly. To close the door between dining room and kitchen never occurred to Milly. It was her house, wasn’t it? What did a door or two matter? From my position at table when we were subsequently placed, I sat throughout the meal with a kitchen vista before me in a chaotic mass of pots, pans, kettles and paper bags, all but the bags greasy and sooty and piled in the sink in plain sight over Milly’s shoulder.
In the interval before dinner, however, regardless of the fact that we were ostensibly there to visit her parents, little Mary assumed that it devolved upon her to entertain us. Which she did in all childish innocence and utter good intention, but which became quickly embarrassing even to the point of wholesome exasperation.
We had not been in the place four minutes before she dug up dolls, doll carriages, toy houses and games and insisted that we interest ourselves in all of them. Again and again Nathan reprimanded her or sent her out. Back she would come in a moment with the utmost self-assurance. “Mamma says I can!” she explained to her father each time and finally shoved a primer in my face with the persistent demand, did I want to hear her read? Now I like youngsters and so does Mary Ann. But God knows there’s a time and place for everything, even children. And little Mary soon got on my nerves. Nathan tried to “save his face” and send her out as patiently and kindly as he could. But Mary continued to run appealing to her mother and demanded to know if “Uncle Billy couldn’t hear her read?” and I overheard Milly retort “Certainly!” as though astonished that any one might not want to hear a first-grade reading lesson as prelude to a five-course dinner. So back came Mary, poked up into my arms, conveyed kitchen flour all over my clothes and started to out-talk her father with such asinine twaddle as, “I see a cat. Can the cat run? Yes, the cat can run. It is a black cat. Oh, see the pretty kittens.” Etc., etc., etc.
Nathan colored, grew grim of lip, ordered the child from the room in no mild tone. And little Mary started for the kitchen with a sudden, high-pitched, heartbroken bawl. In the kitchen she stayed permanently this time, to bounce back a few moments later, loll at the corner of the doorway and announce:
“Ma says to come and eat while everything’s hot because food ain’t no good when it’s cold.” On the strength of this startling information, we went into the dining room. Thereupon we had more Child. “I wanner sit side o’ Uncle Billy! Ma says I can! Pa, I wanner sit side of Uncle Billy!” And when she had ascertained for a certainty that she could sit side of Uncle Billy, she danced around the table, pointing out each of our places and then dragged a high chair noisily from the opposite end of the room over between Nathan and myself. There was also some confusion about the transfer of a patent-rimmed infant’s plate, a mug, a spoon, a napkin.