Only an Incident | Page 5

did, indeed."
Phebe only smiled.
"Humph!" said Mrs. Lane, biting off a thread. "Phebe may go where she likes, for all me, so long as only she goes. Baptist I was bred, and Baptist I'll be buried; but it's with churches as with teas, I say. One's as good as another, but people may take green, or black, or mixed, as best agrees with their stomachs."
"That's a very dangerous doctrine," said Mrs. Upjohn. "Push it a little further, and you'll have babes and sucklings living on beef, and their elders dining on pap."
"Humph!" ejaculated Mrs. Lane again. "If they like it, what's the odds?"
"He-he!" snickered Miss Brooks.
"Well, now," resumed Mr. Hardcastle, "it stands to reason children should learn to like what their elders have liked before them. That's the only decent and Christian way of living. And as I said to my son,--to my Dick, you know" (Mr. Hardcastle had a son of whom he always spoke as if sole owner of him, and indeed solely responsible for his being),--"'Dick,' I said, when he spoke disrespectfully of Mr. Webb's prayers,--and Mr. Webb is a powerful prayer-maker, to be sure,--'Dick,' I said, 'church is like physic, and the more you don't like it, the more good it does you. And if you think Mr. Webb's prayers are too long, it's a sign that for your soul's salvation they ought to be longer.' And I said--"
Mrs. Lane knew by long experience that now or never was the time to stop Mr. Hardcastle. Once fairly started on the subject of his supposed advice to Dick on any given occasion, there was no arresting his eloquence. She started up abruptly from her sewing-machine with her mouth full of pins, emptying them into her hand as she went. "Those ginger-cookies--" she mumbled as she passed Mr. Hardcastle. "They ought to be done by this."
A promissory fragrance caught the old gentleman's nostrils as she opened the door, dispelling sterner thoughts. "Ah," he said, sniffing the air with evident approbation, "I was about going, but I don't mind if I stay and try a few. Your make, Phebe?"
"No," answered Phebe, shortly, moving just out of reach of the bland old hand, which stretched itself out to chuck her under the chin, and was left patting the air with infinite benevolence "mother made them."
"All wrong," commented Mrs. Upjohn. "All wrong. You should not leave your mother any work that you could spare her. One of the first things I taught our Maria" (Mrs. Upjohn in Mr. Hardcastle's presence always said our Maria with great distinctness),--"one of the first things I taught her was, that it was her privilege to save me in every thing. I don't believe in idleness for girls. Aren't you ready yet to attend to these crewels, Phebe? Miss Brooks is snarling them terribly."
"Phebe's really a very good girl in her way though," remarked Mrs. Hardcastle, indulgently, from her easy chair. "I will testify that she can make quite eatable cake at a pinch."
Phebe secretly thought Mrs. Hardcastle ought to know. She remembered her once spoiling a new-made company loaf by slashing into it without so much as a by-your-leave.
"That was very nice cake Miss Lynch gave us last night," piped in Miss Delano.
"Too much citron," pronounced Mrs. Upjohn, decisively. "You should never overload your cake with citron. It turns it out heavy, as sure as there's a sun in the heavens."
"There isn't any to-day; it's cloudy," Phebe could not help putting in, demurely, but no one paid any attention, except that Mrs. Upjohn turned on her an unworded expression of: "If I say so, it is so whether or no."
An animated debate on cake followed, in the middle of which Mrs. Lane reappeared with a trayful of cookies hot from the oven; and two more callers came in, Bell Masters and Dick Hardcastle, which last first woke up Miss Lydia with a boisterous kiss, frightening the poor soul half to death by assuring her she had been snoring so that he heard her way down street, and then devoted himself to the cookies with a good-will and large capacity that filled one with compassionate feelings toward his mother's larder. With these new and younger elements the talk varied a little. They discussed last night's party, the supper, the dresses, the people, and then the probabilities of to-night's party, the people, the dresses, the supper. And then Dick made a sensation by saying right out, that he had just met Mr. Upjohn on Main Street with Mrs. Bruce, holding a parasol gallantly over her head. And everybody looked at once at Mrs. Upjohn, and then back at the graceless Dick, and an awful silence succeeded, broken by Mrs. Upjohn's reaching out her hand and saying in the tone of a Miss Cushman on the stage: "Dick, dear,