“Oh, papa!” said Di.  “Why, I just hate Bobby Larkin and the whole school knows it.”

Mr. Deacon returned to the dining-room, humming in his throat.  He entered upon a pretty scene.

His Ina was darning.  Four minutes of grace remaining to the child Monona, she was spinning on one toe with some Bacchanalian idea of making the most of the present.  Di dominated, her ruffles, her blue hose, her bracelet, her ring.

“Oh, and mamma,” she said, “the sweetest party and the dearest supper and the darlingest decorations and the gorgeousest——­”

“Grammar, grammar,” spoke Dwight Herbert Deacon.  He was not sure what he meant, but the good fellow felt some violence done somewhere or other.

“Well,” said Di positively, “they were.  Papa, see my favour.”

She showed him a sugar dove, and he clucked at it.

Ina glanced at them fondly, her face assuming its loveliest light.  She was often ridiculous, but always she was the happy wife and mother, and her role reduced her individual absurdities at least to its own.

The door to the bedroom now opened and Mrs. Bett appeared.

“Well, mother!” cried Herbert, the “well” curving like an arm, the “mother” descending like a brisk slap.  “Hungry now?”

Mrs. Bett was hungry now.  She had emerged intending to pass through the room without speaking and find food in the pantry.  By obscure processes her son-in-law’s tone inhibited all this.

“No,” she said.  “I’m not hungry.”

Now that she was there, she seemed uncertain what to do.  She looked from one to another a bit hopelessly, somehow foiled in her dignity.  She brushed at her skirt, the veins of her long, wrinkled hands catching an intenser blue from the dark cloth.  She put her hair behind her ears.

“We put a potato in the oven for you,” said Ina.  She had never learned quite how to treat these periodic refusals of her mother to eat, but she never had ceased to resent them.

“No, thank you,” said Mrs. Bett.  Evidently she rather enjoyed the situation, creating for herself a spot-light much in the manner of Monona.

“Mother,” said Lulu, “let me make you some toast and tea.”

Mrs. Bett turned her gentle, bloodless face toward her daughter, and her eyes warmed.

“After a little, maybe,” she said.  “I think I’ll run over to see Grandma Gates now,” she added, and went toward the door.

“Tell her,” cried Dwight, “tell her she’s my best girl.”

Grandma Gates was a rheumatic cripple who lived next door, and whenever the Deacons or Mrs. Bett were angry or hurt or wished to escape the house for some reason, they stalked over to Grandma Gates—­in lieu of, say, slamming a door.  These visits radiated an almost daily friendliness which lifted and tempered the old invalid’s lot and life.

Di flashed out at the door again, on some trivial permission.