Mrs. Marshall began dipping the hot, stewed tomatoes into the glass jars ready in a big pan of boiling water on the back of the stove.  The steam rose up, like a cloud, into her face, which began to turn red and to glisten with perspiration.  “Oh, I don’t suppose it really frightened the bear,” she said moderately, refraining from the dramatic note of completeness which her husband, in spite of himself, gave to everything he touched, and adding instead the pungent, homely savor of reality, which none relished more than Sylvia and her father, incapable themselves of achieving it. “’Most likely the bear would have gone away of his own accord anyhow.  They don’t attack people unless they’re stirred up.”  Arnold bit deeply into the solidity of this unexaggerated presentation, and was silent for a moment, saying then:  “Well, anyhow, she didn’t know he’d go away!  She was a sport, all right!”

“Oh yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Marshall, dipping and steaming, and wiping away the perspiration, which ran down in drops to the end of her large, shapely nose.  “Yes, my grandmother was a sport, all right.”  The acrid smell of hot, cooking tomatoes filled the shed and spread to the edge where Sylvia and her aunt stood, still a little aloof.  Although it bore no resemblance to the odor of violets, it could not be called a disgusting smell:  it was the sort of smell which is quite agreeable when one is very hungry.  But Sylvia was not hungry at all.  She stepped back involuntarily.  Mrs. Marshall-Smith, on the contrary, advanced a step or so, until she stood close to her sister-in-law.  “Barbara, I’d like to see you a few minutes without the children,” she remarked in the neutral tone she always had for her brother’s wife.  “A rather unpleasant occurrence—­I’m in something of a quandary.”

Mrs. Marshall nodded.  “All right,” she agreed.  “Scatter out of here, you children!  Go and let out the hens, and give them some water!”

Arnold needed no second bidding, reminded by his stepmother’s words of his experiences of the morning.  He and Judith scampered away in a suddenly improvised race to see who would reach the chicken-house first.  Sylvia went more slowly, looking back once or twice at the picture made by the two women, so dramatically contrasted—­her mother, active, very upright, wrapped in a crumpled and stained apron, her dark hair bound closely about her round head, her moist, red face and steady eyes turned attentively upon the radiant creature beside her, cool and detached, leaning willow-like on the slender wand of the gold-colored parasol.

Professor Marshall chanced to be late that day in coming home for luncheon, and Aunt Victoria and Arnold had returned to the hotel without seeing him.  His wife remarked that Victoria had asked her to tell him something, but, acting on her inviolable principle that nothing must interfere with the cheerful peace of mealtime, said nothing more to him until after they had finished the big plate of purple grapes from her garden, with which the meal ended.