The Second Generation | Page 5

she. "If I did, she's just in the humor to up and light out, too; and your mother's got no hankering for hanging over a hot stove in this weather."
She transferred the pile of soup plates from the sideboard and seated herself. Her husband poured the soup, and the plates were passed from hand to hand until all were served. "If the Sandyses could see us now, Del," said Arthur.
"Or the Whitneys," suggested Adelaide, and both laughed as people laugh when they think the joke, or the best part of it, is a secret between themselves.
Nothing more was said until the soup was finished and Mrs. Ranger rose and began to remove the dishes. Adelaide, gazing at the table, her thoughts far away, became uneasy, stirred, looked up; she saw that the cause of her uneasiness was the eyes of her father fixed steadily upon her in a look which she could not immediately interpret. When he saw that he had her attention, he glanced significantly toward her mother, waiting upon them. "If the Sandyses or the Whitneys could see us _now_!" he said.
She reddened, pushed back her chair, and sprang up. "Oh, I never thought!" she exclaimed. "Sit down, mother, and let me do that. You and father have got us into awful bad ways, always indulging us and waiting on us."
"You let me alone," replied her mother. "I'm used to it. I did my own work for fifteen years after we were married, and I'd have been doing it yet if your father hadn't just gone out and got a girl and brought her in and set her to work. No; sit down, Del. You don't know anything about work. I didn't bring you up to be a household drudge."
But Del was on her way to the kitchen, whence she presently reappeared with a platter and a vegetable dish. Down the front of her skirt was a streak of grease. "There!" exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, coloring high with exasperation, "your dress is spoiled! I don't believe I can take it out of that kind of goods without leaving a spot. Hiram, I do wish you wouldn't meddle with the children! It seems to me you've got enough to do to 'tend your own affairs at the mill."
This was unanswerable, or so it seemed to her husband. Once more he felt in the wrong, when he knew that, somehow, he was in the right.
But Adelaide was laughing and going forward gracefully with her duties as waitress. "It's nothing," she said; "the stain will come out; and, if it doesn't, there's no harm done. The dress is an old thing. I've worn it until everybody's sick of the sight of it."
Mrs. Ranger now took her turn at looking disapproval. She exclaimed: "Why, the dress is as good as new; much too good to travel in. You ought to have worn a linen duster over it on the train."
At this even Hiram showed keen amusement, and Mrs. Ranger herself joined in the laugh. "Well, it was a good, sensible fashion, anyhow," said she.
Instead of hurrying through dinner to get back to his work with the one o'clock whistle, Hiram Ranger lingered on, much to the astonishment of his family. When the faint sound of the whistles of the distant factories was borne to them through the open windows, Mrs. Ranger cried, "You'll be late, father."
"I'm in no hurry to-day," said Ranger, rousing from the seeming abstraction in which he passed most of his time with his assembled family. After dinner he seated himself on the front porch. Adelaide came up behind and put her arm round his neck. "You're not feeling well, daddy?"
"Not extra," he answered. "But it's nothing to bother about. I thought I'd rest a few minutes." He patted her in shy expression of gratitude for her little attention. It is not strange that Del overvalued the merit of these trivial attentions of hers when they were valued thus high by her father, who longed for proofs of affection and, because of his shyness and silence, got few.
"Hey, Del! Hurry up! Get into your hat and dust-coat!" was now heard, in Arthur's voice, from the drive to the left of the lawns.
Hiram's glance shifted to the direction of the sound. Arthur was perched high in a dogcart to which were attached two horses, one before the other. Adelaide did not like to leave her father with that expression on his face, but after a brief hesitation she went into the house. Hiram advanced slowly across the lawn toward the tandem. When he had inspected it in detail, at close range, he said: "Where'd you get it, young gentleman?" Again there was stress on the "gentleman."
"Oh, I've had it at Harvard several months," he replied carelessly. "I shipped it on. I