Half Portions

Half Portions, by Edna Ferber

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Title: Half Portions
Author: Edna Ferber
Release Date: January 17, 2005 [EBook #14714]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PORTIONS ***

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HALF PORTIONS
BY
EDNA FERBER

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1920

CONTENTS PAGE
I. THE MATERNAL FEMININE 3 II. APRIL 25TH, AS USUAL 36
III. OLD LADY MANDLE 76 IV. YOU'VE GOT TO BE SELFISH
113 V. LONG DISTANCE 148 VI. UN MORSO DOO PANG 157 VII.
ONE HUNDRED PER CENT 201 VIII. FARMER IN THE DELL 230
IX. THE DANCING GIRLS 280

HALF PORTIONS

THE MATERNAL FEMININE
Called upon to describe Aunt Sophy you would have to coin a term or
fall back on the dictionary definition of a spinster. "An unmarried
woman," states that worthy work, baldly, "especially when no longer
young." That, to the world, was Sophy Decker. Unmarried, certainly.
And most certainly no longer young. In figure she was, at fifty, what is
known in the corset ads as a "stylish stout." Well dressed in blue serge,
with broad-toed health shoes and a small, astute hat. The blue serge
was practical common sense. The health shoes were comfort. The hat
was strictly business. Sophy Decker made and sold hats, both astute
and ingenuous, to the female population of Chippewa, Wisconsin.
Chippewa's East-End set bought the knowing type of hat, and the mill
hands and hired girls bought the naïve ones. But whether lumpy or
possessed of that indefinable thing known as line, Sophy Decker's hats
were honest hats.
The world is full of Aunt Sophys, unsung. Plump, ruddy, capable
women of middle age. Unwed, and rather looked down upon by a

family of married sisters and tolerant, good-humoured brothers-in-law,
and careless nieces and nephews.
"Poor Aunt Soph," with a significant half smile. "She's such a good old
thing. And she's had so little in life, really."
She was, undoubtedly, a good old thing--Aunt Soph. Forever sending a
spray of sweeping black paradise, like a jet of liquid velvet, to this pert
little niece in Seattle; or taking Adele, sister Flora's daughter, to
Chicago or New York, as a treat, on one of her buying trips. Burdening
herself, on her business visits to these cities, with a dozen foolish
shopping commissions for the idle women folk of her family. Hearing
without partisanship her sisters' complaints about their husbands, and
her sisters' husbands' complaints about their wives. It was always the
same.
"I'm telling you this, Sophy. I wouldn't breathe it to another living soul.
But I honestly think, sometimes, that if it weren't for the children--"
There is no knowing why they confided these things to Sophy instead
of to each other, these wedded sisters of hers. Perhaps they held for
each other an unuttered distrust or jealousy. Perhaps, in making a
confidante of Sophy, there was something of the satisfaction that comes
of dropping a surreptitious stone down a deep well and hearing it plunk,
safe in the knowledge that it has struck no one and that it cannot
rebound, lying there in the soft darkness. Sometimes they would end by
saying, "But you don't know what it is, Sophy. You can't. I'm sure I
don't know why I'm telling you all this."
But when Sophy answered, sagely, "I know; I know"--they paid little
heed, once having unburdened themselves. The curious part of it is that
she did know. She knew as a woman of fifty must know who, all her
life, has given and given and in return has received nothing. Sophy
Decker had never used the word inhibition in her life. I doubt if she
knew what it meant. When you are busy copying French models for the
fall trade you have little time or taste for Freud. She only knew
(without in the least knowing she knew) that in giving of her goods, of
her affections, of her time, of her energy, she found a certain relief. Her

own people would have been shocked if you had told them that there
was about this old maid aunt something rather splendidly Rabelaisian.
Without being at all what is known as a masculine woman she had,
somehow, acquired the man's viewpoint, his shrewd value sense. She
ate a good deal, and enjoyed her food. She did not care for those queer
little stories that married women sometimes tell, with