Mrs. Putney came in, and he stopped with the laugh of a man who knows that
his wife will find it necessary to account for him and apologise for him.
The ladies kissed each other. Mrs. Putney was dressed in the black silk of
a woman who has one silk; she was red from the kitchen, but all was neat
and orderly in the hasty toilet which she must have made since leaving the
cook-stove. A faint, mixed perfume of violet sachet and fricasseed chicken
attended her.
"Well, as you were saying, Ralph?" she suggested.
"Oh, I was just tracing a little parallel between Hatboro' and Sheol,"
replied her husband.
Mrs. Putney made a _tchk_ of humorous patience, and laughed toward
Annie for sympathy. "Well, then, I guess you needn't go on. Tea's ready.
Shall we wait for the doctor?"
"No; doctors are too uncertain. We'll wait for him while we're eating.
That's what fetches him the soonest. I'm hungry. Ain't you, Win?"
"Not so very," said the boy, with his queer promptness. He stood resting
himself on his crutches at the door, and he now wheeled about, and led the
way out to the living-room, swinging himself actively forward. It seemed
that his haste was to get to the dumb-waiter in the little china closet
opening off the dining-room, which was like the papered inside of a square
box. He called to the girl below, and helped pull it up, as Annie could
tell by the creaking of the rope, and the light jar of the finally arriving
crockery. A half-grown girl then appeared, and put the dishes on at the
places indicated with nods and looks by Mrs. Putney, who had taken her
place at the table. There was a platter of stewed fowl, and a plate of
high-piled waffles, sweltering in successive courses of butter and sugar.
In cut-glass dishes, one at each end of the table, there were canned
cherries and pine-apple. There was a square of old-fashioned soda biscuit,
not broken apart, which sent up a pleasant smell; in the centre of the
table was a shallow vase of strawberries.
It was all very good and appetising; but to Annie it was pathetically
old-fashioned, and helped her to realise how wholly out of the world was
the life which her friends led.
"Winthrop," said Putney, and the father and mother bowed their heads.
The boy dropped his over his folded hands, and piped up clearly: "Our
Father, which art in heaven, help us to remember those who have nothing to
eat. Amen!"