Page:Possession (1926).pdf/499

 where at the command of Ellen the others played in a disheartened fashion, Hattie and Thérèse sat side by side, the one knitting energetically at a blue and white carriage robe, the other nibbling at a biscuit. They both waited. . . they both fidgeted, not daring to risk an explosion from Ellen. She was not to be crossed at this moment.

"When Richard was born," Thérèse was saying. . . "I suffered for twenty-six hours . . . but they do things better nowadays."

And then Hattie, in a low voice lest she disturb the bridge players, "I'm not sure that nature's way isn't the best. I don't believe in hurrying things." And then in the hot silence, the click, click, click of her knitting needles.

"She ought to be walking up and down," said Thérèse anxiously. "Do you think we ought to speak to her?"

"It will do no good. . . . In a moment she won't be able to sit there playing bridge. She'll have to walk up and down. . . . I remember when my last child was born, the doctor said. . . ."

And so they went on, turning over and over again incidents appropriate to the occasion, two prospective grandmothers, each of them passionately interested in what lay ahead. Thérèse, despite her swarthy skin, looked pale, and her fat hand trembled as she nibbled the biscuit. . . . Hattie only knit more and more furiously, raising her head from time to time to glance at her daughter who sat like a Spartan playing with Jean as a partner and winning steadily from Lily and Rebecca.

Snip! Snip! Snip! ran the silver scissors. Click! Click! Click! the knitting needles. Hattie halted for a moment to wipe her red, hot face. And then the cool, desperate voice of Ellen again, saying, "Five tricks and thirty-six in honors."

"It's our rubber," said Jean, white and nervous with the strain. And in his blue eyes the old light of admiration appeared. Ellen had always been like this even in the days when she had taken him, a little boy, to the Bois.

It was ten o'clock when Ellen at last pushed back her chair