“I don’t believe mother’ll ask either of ’em to the wedding,” said she.

When Mrs. Robinson entered, Esther stood expectant and fearful by the table.  Her mother drew up a chair and reached for the bread.

“I didn’t stop anywhere for supper.  You’ve had yours, ’ain’t you?”

The girl nodded.

“Joe come?”

“He just left.”

But Mrs. Robinson was not to be hurried into divulging the result of her calls.  She remained massively mysterious.  Esther began to wish she had not hurried Joe off so unceremoniously.  After her first cup of tea, however, her mother asked for a slip of paper and a pencil.  “I want that pencil in my machine drawer, that writes black, and any kind of paper’ll do,” she said.

Esther brought them; then she took up her sewing.  She was not without a certain self-restraint.  Mrs. Robinson, between her sips of tea, wrote.  The soft gurgle of her drinking annoyed Esther, and she had a tingling desire to snatch the paper.  After a last misdirected placing of her cup in her plate, however, her mother looked up and smiled triumphantly.

“I guess we’ll have to plan something different than boxes of cake.  Listen to this; Mis’ Lawrence—­No, I won’t read that yet.  Mis’ Manning—­I went in there because I thought about her not inviting you when she gave that library party—­one salt and pepper with rose-buds painted on ’em.”

Esther leaned forward; her face was crimson.

“You needn’t look so,” remonstrated her mother.  “It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the way she acted.  I just mentioned that we were only goin’ to invite those you were indebted to, and she went and fetched out that salt and pepper.  I believe she said they was intended in the first place for some relative that didn’t git married in the end.”

The girl made an inarticulate noise in her throat.  Her mother continued, in a loud, impressive tone: 

“Mis’ Stetson—­something worked.  She hasn’t quite decided what, but she’s goin’ to let me know about it.  Jane Watson—­”

“You didn’t go there, mother!”

Mrs. Robinson treated her daughter to a contemptuous look.  “I guess I’ve got sense.  Jane was at Mis’ Stetson’s, and when I came away she went along with me, and insisted that I should stop and see some lamp-lighters she’d got to copy from—­those paper balls.  She seemed afraid a string of those wouldn’t be enough, but I told her how pretty they was, and how much you’d be pleased.”

“I guess I’ll think a good deal more of ’em than I will of Mis’ Manning’s salt and pepper.”  Esther was very near tears.

“Next I went to the Rogerses, and they’ve about concluded to give you a lamp; and they can afford to.  Then that’s all the places I’ve been, except to Mis’ Lawrence’s, and she”—­Mrs. Robinson paused for emphasis—­“she’s goin’ to give you a silver tea-set!”

Esther looked at her mother, her red lips apart.