Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/158

 ing through the heat and confusion, out the swinging doors. In the open air, he placed him on his feet, holding him upright for a moment till he got a sense of his balance. Then, giving him a little push," he said, "There now. Run along home to your Ma like a good little boy. Tell her not to let her little tin Jesus come back again to Hennessey's place if she don't want him messed up too much to be a good missionary." 

In the slate-colored house, the Minerva Circle was seated on the collapsible chairs from McTavish's, listening to a paper by Mrs. Wilbert Phipps on her visit to the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky. To overcome the boredom, some thought about their children and their husbands, or even the hired girl, filling in the time until the dreary reading was over, and they might fall back again into gossip and recipes and children's ailments. It was the price they paid for the honor which came to each of them every eighteen months of standing before the Minerva Circle and reading a paper to which no one listened.

The folding-doors between the parlor and the sitting-room had been opened and those leading from the parlor to the hall were closed. Upstairs Naomi lay in bed with her hair still in steel curlers: she was too ill to come down. She had wept hysterically all the night and most of the morning. When Emma had tried to comfort her with vague, soothing words about matrimony, nothing had made any difference. It was only Aunt Mabelle's visit, colored by great chunks of wisdom and frankness drawn from her own experience and