CHAPTER II

THE DESIRE OF THE MOTH

At the gate before the Revercombs’ house Blossom was standing in a dress of vivid blue.

“Are you going to a party?” Abel inquired as he reached her, and she answered impatiently: 

“I promised to wear this dress over to Judy’s, so that she could see how it is trimmed.”

“Does she want a blue one?” he asked.  It seemed to him little short of ludicrous that Judy should buy a new dress because she was going to be married to him; but in the presence of a custom so firmly entrenched behind the traditions of respectability, he knew that protest would be useless.  Judy would check out her unromantic person in wedding finery because finery was customary on such occasions.

“Of course we couldn’t dress just alike, Abel,” replied Blossom.  His question had seemed foolish to her and her usual soft solemnity was ruffled by a passing irritation.  “Judy’s frock will be green, but she wants bretelles like these on it.”

“Bretelles?” he repeated as incredulously as if he had possessed any but the vaguest idea of the article the word described.  “Why didn’t she wait until she was married, and then I’d have bought them for her,” he added.

“Of course she wants her wedding clothes—­all girls do,” said Blossom, invoking tradition.  “Are you coming in now.  We’re having dinner a little earlier.”

She turned and moved slowly up the walk, while he followed, caressing the head of Moses, his spotted hound.  From the kitchen he could hear Sarah Revercomb scolding the small negro, Mary Jo, whom she was training to wait on the table.  On one side of the hearth grandmother sat very alert, waiting for her bowl of soup, into which Mary Jo was crumbling soft bread, while across from her grandfather chuckled to himself over a recollection which he did not divulge.

At Abel’s entrance, the old man stopped chuckling and inquired in an interested tone,

“Did you buy that ar steer, Abel?”

“Not yet, I’m to think it over and let Jim Bumpass know.”

“Thar never was sech a man for steers,” remarked grandmother, contemptuously.  “Here he’s still axin’ about steers when he can’t hist himself out of his cheer.  If I were you, Abel, I’d tell him he’d better be steddyin’ about everlastin’ damnation instead of steers.  Steers ain’t goin’ to haul him out of hell fire if he once gits down into it.”

“Well, you can tell her, Abel,” retorted grandfather, “that it’s time enough to holler ‘hell-fire!’ when you begin to burn.”

Mary Jo prevented a rejoinder by appearing with a napkin, which she tied under his wife’s chin, and a little later the old woman could be heard drinking greedily her bowl of soup.  She lived for food, yet, like most passions which have become exaggerated by concentration out of all proportion to the fact upon which they depend, the moment of fulfilment seemed always brief and unsatisfactory after the intensity of anticipation.  To-day the trouble was there were no carrots in the soup, and this omission reduced her to tears because it had blighted the hopes of her entire morning.