For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious meal.  Hannah’s satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided, and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of the pie crust.  And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self-absorption, even Lise was gay—­largely because her pet aversion, the dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from the cashier’s cage.  She became almost hysterical with glee as she pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie, draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him.  “Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!” Lise shrieked.  “She gave the pile a shove when he landed.  He’s got her number all right.  But say, it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he got up, he looked like Santa Claus.  All the girls in the floor were there we nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha.  And Ruby says, sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain’t hurt, Mr. Waiters.’  He was sore!  He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his coco as big as a potato.”  So vivid was Lise’s account of this affair which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of drudgery-that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language symbolic of a world she feared and detested.

“If I talked like you,” said Lise, “they wouldn’t understand me.”

Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston.  Now she began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce “I’m going to marry Mr. Ditmar.”  After the first shock of amazement, she could imagine her father’s complete and complacent acceptance of the news as a vindication of an inherent quality in the Bumpus blood.  He would begin to talk about the family.  For, despite what might have been deemed a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of Puritans.  And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of the Chippering Mills?  Janet smiled.  She was amused, too, by the thought that Lise’s envy would be modified by the prospect of a heightened social status; since Lise, it will be remembered, had her Providence likewise.  Hannah’s god was not a Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution, in ingenious methods of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle baubles before the eyes of his children—­only to snatch them away again.  Hannah’s pessimism would persist as far as the altar, and beyond!