PAGE 13
April 25th, As Usual
by
“Welcome home! Home!”
She clung to him. “Oh, Hosey, isn’t it wonderful? How big it looks! Huge!”
“Land, yes. ” He strode from hall to dining-room, from kitchen to library. “I know how a jack-in-the-box feels when the lid’s opened. No wonder it grins and throws out its arms. ”
They did little talking after that. By five o’clock he was down in the cellar. She heard him making a great sound of rattling and bumping and shaking and pounding and shoveling. She smelled the acrid odour of his stubby black pipe.
“Hosey!”—from the top of the cellar stairs. “Hosey br
ing up a can of preserves when you come. ”
“What?”
“Can of preserves. ”
“What kind?”
“Any kind you like. ”
“Can I have two kinds?”
He brought up quince marmalade and her choicest damson plums. He put them down on the kitchen table and looked around, spatting his hands together briskly to rid them of dust. “She’s burning pretty good now. That Fred! Don’t any more know how to handle a boiler than a baby does. Is the house getting warmer?”
He clumped into the dining-room, through the butler’s pantry, but he was back again in a wink, his eyes round. “Why, say, mother! You’ve got out the best dishes, and the silver, and the candles and all. And the tablecloth with the do-dads on it. Why—”
“I know it” She opened the oven door, took out a pan of biscuits and slid it deftly to one side. “It seems as if I can’t spread enough. I’m going to use the biggest platter, and I’ve got two extra boards in the table. It’s big enough to seat ten. I want everything big somehow. I’ve cooked enough potatoes for a regiment, and I know it’s wasteful, and I don’t care. I’ll eat in my kitchen apron, if you’ll keep on your overalls. Come on. ”
He cut into the steak—a great thick slice. He knew she could never eat it, and she knew she could never eat it. But she did eat it all, ecstatically. And in a sort of ecstatic Nirvana the quiet and vastness and peace of the big old frame house settled down upon them.
The telephone in the hall rang startlingly, unexpectedly.
“Let me go, Milly. ”
“But who in the world! Nobody knows we’re—”
He was at the telephone. “Who? Who? Oh. ” He turned: “It’s Miz’ Merz. She says her little Minnie went by at six and saw a light in the house. She—Hello! What?… She says she wants to know if she’s to save time for you at the end of the month for the April cleaning. ”
Mrs. Brewster took the receiver from him: “The twenty-fifth, as usual, Miz’ Merz. The twenty-fifth, as usual. The attic must be a sight. ”