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"In the conversations of Dwight and Ina," it is said of the husband and wife, "you saw the historical home forming in clots in the fluid wash of the community" and anthropology holds the candle. Grandma Bett is, for the moment, the symbol of decrepit age, as Lulu is the symbol of bullied spinsterhood.
Bett was in best black and ruches, and she seized upon Monona and patted her, as her own form of social expression; and Monona wriggled like a puppy, as hers. "Quiet, pettie," said Ina, eyebrows up. She caught her lower lip in her teeth. "Well, sir," said Dwight, "you wouldn't think it to look at us, but mother had her hands pretty full, bringing us up." Into Dwight's face came another look.
She shook hands with the stranger, not looking at him, and said, "Come to supper, all." Monona was already in her place, singing under-breath. Mrs. Bett, after hovering in the kitchen door, entered; but they forgot to introduce her. "Where's Di?" asked Ina. "I declare that daughter of mine is never anywhere." A brief silence ensued as they were seated.
When Dwight had finished his narration, there was a pause, broken at last by Mrs. Bett: "You tell that better than you used to when you started in telling it," she observed. "You got in some things I guess you used to clean forget about. Monona, get off my rocker." Monona made a little whimpering sound, in pretence to tears.
A plucky fellow, this Captain Ure who saved him. I wonder who he is." "I wonder!" Corp said with a groan. "There was an Alexander Bett with him, according to the papers," Tommy went on. "Do you know any Bett?" "It's no a Thrums name," Corp replied thankfully. "I just made it up." "What do you mean?" Tommy asked blankly. Corp sighed, and went back again to the wagon.
"Hush, mother," Lulu said, troubled, her ethical refinements conflicting with her honesty. "Speak the truth and shame the devil," Mrs. Bett contended. When dinner was ready at noon, Di did not appear. A little earlier Lulu had heard her moving about her room, and she served her in expectation that she would join them.
Bett's ministrations for an hour. "Don't you help me," Mrs. Bett warned them away sharply. "I guess I can help myself yet awhile." She gained her chair. And still in her momentary rule of attention, she said clearly: "I got a joke. Grandma Gates says it's all over town Di and Bobby Larkin eloped off together to-day. He!" The last was a single note of laughter, high and brief. The silence fell.
And again she thought: "He doesn't know anything about the letter. He thinks Ninian got tired of me." Deep in her heart there abode her certainty that this was not so. By some etiquette of consent, Mrs. Bett cleared the table and Lulu and Cornish went into the parlour. There lay the letter on the drop-leaf side-table, among the shells.
He was after a big one, he informed Corp, though he might as well have been fishing in a treatise on the art of angling. Corp exchanged pleasantries with him; told him that Tommy was Captain Ure, and that he was his faithful servant Alexander Bett, both of Edinburgh. Since the birth of his child, Corp had become something of a humourist. Tommy was not listening.
But you will" and more of the same sort, everybody laughing heartily, save Lulu, who looked uncomfortable and wished that Dwight wouldn't, and Mrs. Bett, who paid no attention to anybody that night, not because she had not been introduced, an omission, which she had not even noticed, but merely as another form of "tantrim." A self-indulgence. They emerged for croquet.
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