“But how do you make it?” quickly questioned Aunt Amelia, like a repeating rifle. If the first shot had not struck home, the second was likely to. “Do you use hop yeast? Potatoes? I thought so. Don’t know how to make salt-rising, do you? It’s just what might have been expected.” “David has always been used to salt-rising bread,” said Aunt Hortense with a grim set of her lips as though she were delivering a judgment. “He was raised on it.” “If David does not like my bread,” said Marcia with a rising color and a nervous little laugh, “then I shall try to make some that he does like.” There was an assurance about the “if” that did not please the oracle. “David was raised on salt-rising bread,” said Aunt Hortense again as if that settled it. “We can send you down a loaf or two every time we bake until you learn how.” “I’m sure it’s very kind of you,” said Marcia, not at all pleased, “but I do not think that will be necessary. David has always seemed to like our bread when he visited at home. Indeed he often praised it.” “David would not be impolite,” said Aunt Amelia, after a suitable pause in which Marcia felt disapprobation in the air. “It would be best for us to send it. David’s health might suffer if he was not suitably nourished.” Marcia’s cheeks grew redder. Bread had been one of her stepmother’s strong points, well infused into her young pupil. Madam Schuyler had never been able to say enough to sufficiently express her scorn of people who made salt-rising bread. “My stepmother made beautiful bread,” she said quite childishly; “she did not think salt-rising was so healthy as that made from hop yeast. She disliked the odor in the house from salt-rising bread.” Now indeed the aunts exchanged glances of “On to the combat.” Four red spots flamed giddily out in their four sallow cheeks, and eight shining knitting needles suddenly became idle. The moment was too momentous to work. It was as they feared, even the worst. For, be it known, salt-rising bread was one of their most tender points, and for it they would fight to the bitter end. They looked at her with four cold, forbidding, steely, spectacled eyes, and Marcia felt that their looks said volumes: “And she so young too! To be so out of the way!” was what they might have expressed to one another. Marcia felt she had been unwise in uttering her honest, indignant sentiments concerning salt-rising bread. The pause was long and impressive, and the bride felt like a naughty little four-year-old. At last Aunt Hortense took up her knitting again with the air that all was over and an unrevokable verdict was passed upon the culprit. “People have never seemed to stay away from our house on that account,” she said dryly. “I’m sure I hope it will not be so disagreeable that it will affect your coming to see us sometimes with David.” There was an iciness in her manner that seemed to suggest a long line of offended family portraits of ancestors frowning down upon her.