Jane reddened with anger. “Mr. Blair preaches a good Presbyterian sermon and he doesn’t preach to empty pews, either.”
This was a stab for Becky and Merton. When the power of the Children of Peace had waned Merton had returned to the Church of England, of which his mother always remained a member and of which his wife’s family were aggressive supporters. It was in his religion that Merton Gower was able to feel himself superior to his brother and he never lost an opportunity of flaunting, in his own gentle way, that superiority in Roger’s face. Now his voice came out of his beard, muffled like Roger’s but without the gruffness.
“You forget, Jane, that in the Church we have two services every Sunday while you have only one.”
This appropriation of the name “Church” made Roger’s eyes bulge. He grunted scornfully, then said:—
“Our one service is worth your two put together.”
Jane gave him a look of encouragement.
“If it comes to the length of the sermon, I dare say it is,” said Merton. “I heard your minister preach once and I fell asleep before he was done with it.”
“You fell asleep,” said his brother, “because you couldn’t understand it. You’re used to the singsong stuff your minister gives you.”
Jane made faces of approval at Roger. Becky’s eyes snapped in fury.
Merton combed his beard with short, strong fingers. “It may sound singsong to you,” he said, “but our rector is an educated man. He’s got the history of the Church and its doctrines at his finger tips. He knows that he doesn’t have to talk his congregation off their hind legs to persuade them that he’s right. He knows he’s right and we know he’s right.”
“I wish you’d come and hear the Reverend Blair expound the Scriptures,” said Roger. “Then you’d find out what real learning is. And he’s humble with it all.”
“If you call it humble,” interrupted Becky, “to shake his finger at a child for making a little noise.”
“Shaw giggled out loud,” said Jane.
“I’d giggle too,” said Merton, “if I had to listen to that man’s reasoning. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, you know.”
Shaw gave a sheepish grin and slid on to the edge of a hair-cloth chair, drinking in every word of the argument that followed.
Before long the two women went out of the room to view the store of linen being prepared for Esther’s marriage. The voices of the young men and women could be heard from the yard. There was a swing on the branch of a great elm and Beaty was being swung by Cousin Leslie. As Shaw listened to the two old men he could see Beaty fly past the window, first her feet in their clumsy buttoned boots, then her buxom body and pink and white face with the mouth open. He even had a glimpse of dapper little Leslie, smiling with satisfaction at her squeals and pretended fright. Inside his clothes Shaw’s body still felt damp and cool, his inside a little strange after the cream.
He wondered if he would be allowed to come to the table, but his grandmother nodded toward a seat beside her and he sat down with relief though with little appetite. The long weeping of the night before, the long spell without food, the dawdling in the cold water of the pool, the surfeit of cream, all combined to make him drowsy. He could scarcely keep his eyelids open.
No one noticed him. All were intent on making a hearty meal except Aunt Becky, who nibbled the food gingerly, implying that it was coarser than she was accustomed to or could more than tolerate. This implication made Jane Gower nervous and she kept casting flurried glances at her swarthy little sister-in-law.
The two old men were speechless after their long argument. They devoted themselves to poking large pieces of hot tea biscuit into their mouths, which opened unexpectedly in the midst of moustache and beard like burrows under a heap of brushwood. Shaw compared the beards, fascinated. Grandpa’s collected the most crumbs, but Uncle Merton’s showed a trickle of moisture after each drink of tea.
Little was usually said at that table during mealtime. Like the cattle in the stalls they munched slowly and quietly. But, with visitors there, an effort at conversation was made and an attempt, on Jane’s part, to boast a little. She told, as though to the teapot, of the good price she had got for her maple syrup that spring, of the price her cheese had fetched in yesterday’s market. Becky listened with a superior quirk at the corner of her mouth. When the mild boasting was finished she told of what her bees had brought her in the past season. Her honey was reckoned the best in the township. It was a sum so large that it could scarcely be believed in. Jane looked toward Merton for confirmation. He bent in affirmative so profound that the top of his smooth bald head addressed her instead of his visage.
She gulped. “Hm, well, well,” she muttered, “that’s a lot of money to make out of bees.”
“It was such a lot,” said Becky, “that I just didn’t know what to do with it. It wasn’t as though I needed any clothes for I’d just bought this new black silk and my bonnet with the cherries. And I didn’t want to put it in the bank because Merton attends to all that, so I bought a new parlor suite, in curly walnut,—you must come over soon and see it,—and I bought a picture of the meeting of Wellington and Blücher after Waterloo for Merton, and a velvet smoking cap with a gold tassel for Leslie, now that he’s taken to smoking cigars.”
What pride there was in Roger Gower’s family was deflated after this speech. They wilted under the depression of inferiority. Their embarrassed silence was broken by Leslie, who said to Beatrice:—
“You ought to see me in the cap, Beaty. I look a regular dude, I can tell you.”
Beaty began to shake with laughter. She could not control herself. Her shoulders heaved and a rich color flooded her neck. Leslie kept a sidelong tantalizing look fixed on her.
To draw attention from his daughter’s silly behavior, Roger Gower said to Becky:—
“I’ve never had a present from Jane, no matter what she’s sold. I don’t know what a present looks like.”
His family stared at him dumbfounded. He was always so reticent, kept himself so to himself, that to hear him speak of getting a present or not getting a present seemed almost indecent. Jane felt it most deeply of all, for she had indeed once given him a present, and that out of her cheese money!
“You did so get a present,” she said gruffly. “I gave you a cup and saucer.”
He glared at her out of his sky-blue eyes.
“Me? A cup and saucer? I don’t remember.”
With her lips tight shut and holding herself together she rose and went to the china cupboard. She took out a large cup and saucer with yellow roses trailing over it and a china barrier for keeping the moustache dry, and set it sharply on the table beside him.
“There!” she said. “Do you remember it now?”
He picked up the fragile thing in his thick hand. “Well,” he grunted, “I’m not sure. I sort of recognize it but—I’m not sure.”
Merton sputtered through his beard in appreciation of his brother’s waggishness. “Do you mean to say, Roger, that you’ve never drunk out of it?”
“Never,” declared Roger. “As sure as I’m sitting here! I call that a queer kind of present, don’t you, Becky?”
“It’s not the way I give presents,” said Becky loftily. “When I give a thing, I give it!”
Jane, who had sat down again, angrily took up the cup and put sugar, milk, and tea into it, to overflowing. She pushed it toward Roger. “There,” she said, “drink your fill, for goodness’ sake, and let’s hear no more of it.”
With a roguish look over the brim he lifted the cup to his beard and absorbed the tea. “How about my