And that was what I done to her, expecting that if she didn’t keep still I’d bake the ice cream and freeze the cake and lose my own head entire.
Out in the shed I’d set Amos to cracking ice, and Harriet to cracking nuts, with a flatiron and a hammer. And pretty soon I stepped along to see how things was going. Land, land, it was a pretty sight! They was both working away, but Amos was looking down at her more’n to his work, and Harriet was looking up at him like he was all of it—and the whole air was pleasant with something sweeter than could be named. So I left them two alone, well knowing that I could manage a company sole by myself yet a while, no matter how much courting and mourning was going on all around me.
And everything went fine, in spite of Mis’ Fire Chief’s looking like death in the rocker, with a wet rag on her brow.
But she kept lifting up one corner and giving directions.
“No pink frostin’, Calliope, you know,” she says, “only white. An’ no colored flowers—only white ones. You’ll have to write the place cards—my hand shakes so I don’t dare trust myself. But I’ll cut up the ribbin for the sandwiches—I can do that much,” says she.
The place cards was mourning ones, with broad black edges, and the ribbin to tie up the sandwiches was black too. And the centerpiece was one Mis’ Fire Chief and Hettie hed been up early that morning making—it was a set piece from the Chief’s funeral, a big goblet, turned bottom side up, done in white geraniums with “He is Near” in purple everlastings. The table was going to look real tasty, Mis’ Fire Chief thought, all in black and white so—with little sprays of willow laid around on the cloth instead of ferns.
“I’ve done the best I could,” she said, solemn, “to make the occasion do honor to Maria an’ pay reverence to the Chief.”
I had just finally persuaded her to go up-stairs and look the chambers over and then try to take a little rest somewheres around, when Amos come to the shed door to tell me the freezer wouldn’t turn no more, and was it broke or was the cream froze. And Mis’ Fire Chief, seeing him coming in the shed way, seemed to sense for the first time that he was there.
“Amos More,” says she, “what you doin’ here?”
“I ask’ him,” says I, hasty; “I had to have his help about the ice.”