She went to the office, next day, in more or less of a dream. She was
very quiet, and worked very hard. Nobody said much to her; she took
care not to let them. When stray congratulations came her way, as they
were bound to, and when old Mr. Morrissey, the vice-head, said, "I
suppose we can't hope to keep you long now," and beamed, she answered
without any heartbeatings or difficulty. She was quite sure she would
never feel gay again; she had had so much happen to her. But it was
rather pleasant not to be able to have any feelings, if a little
monotonous. The only thing at all on her mind was the question as to
how much cheese a party of four needed for a rarebit, and whether Logan
would or could eat rarebits at night. And even that was to a certain
degree a matter of indifference.
She finally decided that scallops a la King might be more what he would
eat. She bought them on her way home, together with all the rest of
the things she needed. Lucille had produced a fourth person with her
usual lack of effort, and it promised to be--if anything in life could
have been anything but flavorless--rather a good party.
In fact, it was. It was a dear little apartment that the girls shared,
with a living-room chosen especially for having nice times in. It was
lighted by tall candles, and had a gas grate that was almost human.
There was a grand piano which took up more than its share of room,
there was the davenport aforesaid, there were companionable chairs and
taborets acquired by Lucille and kept by Marjorie in the exact places
where they looked best; there were soft draperies, also hemmed and put
up by Marjorie. The first thing visitors always said about it was that
it made them feel comfortable and at home. They generally attributed
the homelikeness to Lucille, who was dangerously near looking matronly,
rather than to Marjorie, who would be more like a firefly than a matron
even when she became a grandmother.
Marjorie, with cooking to do, tied up in a long orange colored apron,
almost forgot things. She loved to make things to eat. Lucille,
meanwhile, sat on the piano-stool and played snatches of "The Long,
Long Trail," and the men, Lucille's negligible one and Marjorie's Mr.
Logan, made themselves very useful in the way of getting plates and
arranging piles of crackers. The small black kitten which had been a
present to Lucille from the janitor, who therefore was a mother to it
while the girls were out, sat expectantly on the edge of all the places
where he shouldn't be, purring loudly and having to be put down at
five-minute intervals.
"I suppose this is a sort of celebration of your having your husband
back," said the Lucille man presently to Marjorie. He had been told
so, indeed, by Lucille, who was under that impression herself, Logan
looked faintly surprised. He, to be frank, had forgotten all about
Marjorie's having a husband who had to be celebrated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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