"How long?" inquired Vivian. "I'm twenty-five. No man has asked me to marry him yet. Some of the women in this town have waited thirty – forty – fifty – sixty years. No one has asked them."
"I was married at sixteen," suddenly remarked Vivian's grandmother. "And my mother wasn't but fifteen. Huh!" A sudden little derisive noise she made; such as used to be written "humph!"
For the past five years, Mrs. Pettigrew had made her home with the Lanes. Mrs. Lane herself was but a feeble replica of her energetic parent. There was but seventeen years difference in their ages, and comparative idleness with some ill-health on the part of the daughter, had made the difference appear less.
Mrs. Pettigrew had but a poor opinion of the present generation. In her active youth she had reared a large family on a small income; in her active middle-age, she had trotted about from daughter's house to son's house, helping with the grandchildren. And now she still trotted about in all weathers, visiting among the neighbors and vibrating as regularly as a pendulum between her daughter's house and the public library.
The books she brought home were mainly novels, and if she perused anything else in the severe quiet of the reading-room, she did not talk about it. Indeed, it was a striking characteristic of Mrs. Pettigrew that she talked very little, though she listened to all that went on with a bright and beady eye, as of a highly intelligent parrot. And now, having dropped her single remark into the conversation, she shut her lips tight as was her habit, and drew another ball of worsted from the black bag that always hung at her elbow.
She was making one of those perennial knitted garments, which, in her young days, were called "Cardigan jackets," later "Jerseys," and now by the offensive name of "sweater." These she constructed in great numbers, and their probable expense was a source of discussion in the town. "How do you find friends enough to give them to?" they asked her, and she would smile enigmatically and reply, "Good presents make good friends."
"If a woman minds her P's and Q's she can get a husband easy enough," insisted the invalid. "Just shove that lamp nearer, Vivian, will you."
Vivian moved the lamp. Her mother moved her chair to follow it and dropped her darning egg, which the girl handed to her.
"Supper's ready," announced a hard-featured middle-aged woman, opening the dining-room door.
At this moment the gate clicked, and a firm step was heard coming up the path.
"Gracious, that's the minister!" cried Mrs. Lane. "He said he'd be in this afternoon if he got time. I thought likely 'twould be to supper."
She received him cordially, and insisted on his staying, slipping out presently to open a jar of quinces.
The Reverend Otis Williams was by no means loathe to take occasional meals with his parishioners. It was noted that, in making pastoral calls, he began with the poorer members of his flock, and frequently arrived about meal-time at the houses of those whose cooking he approved.
"It is always a treat to take supper here," he said. "Not feeling well, Mr. Lane? I'm sorry to hear it. Ah! Mrs. Pettigrew! Is that jacket for me, by any chance? A little sombre, isn't it? Good evening, Vivian. You are looking well – as you always do."
Vivian did not like him. He had married her mother, he had christened her, she had "sat under" him for long, dull, uninterrupted years; yet still she didn't like him.
"A chilly evening, Mr. Lane," he pursued.
"That's what I say," his host agreed. "Vivian says it isn't; I say it is."
"Disagreement in the family! This won't do, Vivian," said the minister jocosely. "Duty to parents, you know! Duty to parents!"
"Does duty to parents alter the temperature?" the girl asked, in a voice of quiet sweetness, yet with a rebellious spark in her soft eyes.
"Huh!" said her grandmother – and dropped her gray ball. Vivian picked it up and the old lady surreptitiously patted her.
"Pardon me," said the reverend gentleman to Mrs. Pettigrew, "did you speak?"
"No," said the old lady, "Seldom do."
"Silence is golden, Mrs. Pettigrew. Silence is golden. Speech is silver, but silence is golden. It is a rare gift."
Mrs. Pettigrew set her lips so tightly that they quite disappeared, leaving only a thin dented line in her smoothly pale face. She was called by the neighbors "wonderfully well preserved," a phrase she herself despised. Some visitor, new to the town, had the hardihood to use it to her face once. "Huh!" was the response. "I'm just sixty. Henry Haskins and George Baker and Stephen Doolittle are all older'n I am – and still doing business, doing it better'n any of the young folks as far as I can see. You don't compare them to canned pears, do you?"
Mr. Williams knew her value in church work, and took no umbrage at her somewhat inimical expression; particularly as just then Mrs. Lane appeared and asked them to walk out to supper.
Vivian sat among them, restrained and courteous, but inwardly at war with her surroundings. Here was her mother, busy, responsible, serving creamed codfish and hot biscuit; her father, eating wheezily, and finding fault with the biscuit, also with the codfish; her grandmother, bright-eyed, thin-lipped and silent. Vivian got on well with her grandmother, though neither of them talked much.
"My mother used to say that the perfect supper was cake, preserves, hot bread, and a 'relish,'" said Mr. Williams genially. "You have the perfect supper, Mrs. Lane."
"I'm glad if you enjoy it, I'm sure," said that lady. "I'm fond of a bit of salt myself."
"And what are you reading now, Vivian," he asked paternally.
"Ward," she answered, modestly and briefly.
"Ward? Dr. Ward of the Centurion?"
Vivian smiled her gentlest.
"Oh, no," she replied; "Lester F. Ward, the Sociologist."
"Poor stuff, I think!" said her father. "Girls have no business to read such things."
"I wish you'd speak to Vivian about it, Mr. Williams. She's got beyond me," protested her mother.
"Huh!" said Mrs. Pettigrew. "I'd like some more of that quince, Laura."
"My dear young lady, you are not reading books of which your parents disapprove, I hope?" urged the minister.
"Shouldn't I – ever?" asked the girl, in her soft, disarming manner. "I'm surely old enough!"
"The duty of a daughter is not measured by years," he replied sonorously. "Does parental duty cease? Are you not yet a child in your father's house?"
"Is a daughter always a child if she lives at home?" inquired the girl, as one seeking instruction.
He set down his cup and wiped his lips, flushing somewhat.
"The duty of a daughter begins at the age when she can understand the distinction between right and wrong," he said, "and continues as long as she is blessed with parents."
"And what is it?" she asked, large-eyed, attentive.
"What is it?" he repeated, looking at her in some surprise. "It is submission, obedience – obedience."
"I see. So Mother ought to obey Grandmother," she pursued meditatively, and Mrs. Pettigrew nearly choked in her tea.
Vivian was boiling with rebellion. To sit there and be lectured at the table, to have her father complain of her, her mother invite pastoral interference, the minister preach like that. She slapped her grandmother's shoulder, readjusted the little knit shawl on the straight back – and refrained from further speech.
When Mrs. Pettigrew could talk, she demanded suddenly of the minister, "Have you read Campbell's New Theology?" and from that on they were all occupied in listening to Mr. Williams' strong, clear and extensive views on the subject – which lasted into the parlor again.
Vivian sat for awhile in the chair nearest the window, where some thin thread of air might possibly leak in, and watched the minister with a curious expression. All her life he had been held up to her as a person