Divers Women | Page 6

represented their very best, and repair to the kitchen to cook their own Sunday dinners. "Was it a thoughtful dwelling upon such verses of Scripture as had been presented that morning which made the Sunday dinner the most elaborate, the most carefully prepared, and more general in its variety, than any other dinner in the week? Their breakfast hour was late, and, by putting the dinner hour at half-past three, it gave them time to be elaborate, according to their definition of that word. Not being cumbered with hired help, mother and daughter could have confidential Sabbath conversations with each other as they worked. So while Mrs. Brower carefully washed and stuffed the two plump chickens, Jennie prepared squash, and turnip, and potatoes for cooking, planning meanwhile for the hot apple sauce, and a side dish or two for dessert, and the two talked.
"Well, did you get an invitation?" the mother asked, and the tone of suppressed motherly anxiety showed that the subject was one of importance. Did she mean an invitation to the great feast which is to be held when they sit down to celebrate the marriage supper of the Lamb, and which this holy Sabbath day was given to help one prepare for? No, on second thought it could not have been that; for, after listening to the morning sermon no thought of anxiety could have mingled with that question. Assuredly Jennie was invited--nay, urged, entreated; the only point of Anxiety could have been--would she accept? But it was another place that filled the minds of both mother and daughter.
"Indeed I did." There was glee in Miss Jennie's voice. "I thought I wasn't going to. She went right by me and asked people right and left, never once looking at me. But she came away back after she had gone into the hall, and came over to my seat and whispered that she had been looking for me all the way out, but had missed me. She said I must be sure to come, for she depended on us young people to help make the affair less ceremonious. Don't you think, Emma wasn't invited at all, and I don't believe she will be; almost everyone has been now. Emma was so sure of her invitation, because she was such a friend of Lu Jamison's. She thought she would get cards to the wedding, you know; and when they didn't come she felt sure of the reception. She has been holding her head wonderfully high all the week about it, and now she is left out and I am in. Mother, isn't that rich?"
Mrs. Brower plumped her chickens into the oven, and wiped the flour from her cheek and sighed.
"There will be no end of fuss in getting you ready, and expense too. What are you going to wear, anyway?"
"Mother," said Jennie, impressively, turning away from her squash to get a view of her mother's face, "I ought to have a new dress for this party. I haven't anything fit to be seen. It is months since I have had a new one; and everybody is sick of my old blue dress; I'm sure I am."
"It is entirely out of the question," Mrs. Brower said, irritably, "and you know it is. I wonder at your even thinking of such a thing, and we so many bills to pay; and there's that pew-rent hasn't been paid in so long that I'm ashamed to go to church."
"I wish the pew-rent was in Jericho, and the pew, too!" was Miss Jennie's spirited answer. "I should think churches ought to be free, if nothing else is. It is a great religion, selling pews so high that poor people can't go to church. If I had thought I couldn't have a new dress I should have declined the invitation at once. I did think it was time for me to have something decent; and I make my own clothes, too, which is more than most any other girls do. I saw a way to make it this morning. I studied Miss Harvey's dress all the while we were standing. I could make trimming precisely like hers, and put it on and all. I could do every thing to it but cut and fit it."
"I tell you you haven't anything to cut and fit, and can't have. What's the use in talking?"
And in her annoyance and motherly bitterness at having to disappoint her daughter, Mrs. Brower let fall the glass jar she had been trying to open, and it opened suddenly, disgorging and mingling its contents with bits of glass on the kitchen floor. Does anyone, having overheard thus much of the conversation, and having a fair knowledge of human nature, need to be told that there were sharp words, bitterly spoken, in that