Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/51

Rh besides "Yes," and "No," and "You don't say!" in response to Cousin Pattie's tireless attempts at friendliness. David didn't give voice to as much as that. At the head of the table, with his shoulders stooped over his plate, and his head bent, as if he were saying a continual grace, David simply glowered as he stared into his plate and shoveled food, snapping now and then, like an angry animal, at his knife. Whenever David felt out-of-sorts, he ate with his knife. It took the place of swearing with him. Also, as an expression of displeasure, he would frequently don a disreputable old smoking-jacket, which Aunt Augusta had long ago declared she'd never put needle to again. He wore it to-night. Reba had blushed scarlet when she saw him appear in the dining-room in the frayed old garment. It was a trying meal for Reba.

But Cousin Pattie didn't seem to mind it. She kept up a steady flow of cheerful talk, as she folded thin slice after thin slice of cold lamb on the end of her fork, depositing it all at once, safely into her large mouth, and washing it down with water, to which she helped herself frequently from the glass bottle at her left.

"I wasn't going to leave this corner of the world," she explained early in the meal, "till I'd dropped in on you folks, and broken bread with you. I said to Hattie Miles—I've been stopping with Hattie for two weeks down in Union—I'm going up to see my Auntie Bliss, and Cousin David and his folks, if it takes a leg. I'm off to San Domingo day after to-morrow," she tucked in. "Sudden," she went on. "Didn't know I was going till yesterday afternoon. Thought I had