"Did they tell you, Amanda," she went on placidly, as she rocked and
fanned herself with a huge palm-leaf fan, "that we're gettin' company
for supper?"
"Yes--Isabel."
"Yes. Martin, he goes in to see her at Lancaster real often and he's
all the time talkin' about her and wantin' we should meet her. She has
him to supper--ach, they call it dinner--but it's what they eat in the
evening. I just said to his pop we'll ask her out here to see us once
and find out what for girl she is. From what Martin says she's a little
tony and got money and lots of fine things. You know Martin is the kind
can suit himself to most any kind of people. He can make after every
place he goes, even if they do put on style. So mebbe she thinks
Martin's from tony people, too. But when she comes here she can see
that we're just plain country people. I don't put no airs on, but I did
say I'd like to have things nice so that she can't laugh at us, for I'd
pity Martin if she did that. Mebbe you know how to set the things on
the table a little more like they do now. It's so long since I ate any
place tony. I said we'd eat in the room, too, and not in the kitchen.
We always eat in the kitchen for it's big and handy and nice and cool
with all the doors and windows open. But I'll carry things in the room
to-night. It will please Martin if we have things nice for his girl."
"Um-huh, Martin's got a girl!" sang Charlie gleefully.
"Yes," spoke up Johnny, a little older and wiser than Charlie. "I know
he's got a girl. He's got a big book in his room and I seen him once
look in it and pick up something out of it and look at it like it was
something worth a whole lot. I sneaked in after he went off and what
d'you think it was? Nothing at all but one of them pink lady-slippers
we find in the woods near the schoolhouse! He pressed it in that book
and acted like it was something precious, so I guess his girl give it
to him."
Amanda remembered the pink lady-slipper. She had seen Isabel give it to
Martin that spring day when the city girl's glowing face had smiled
over the pink azaleas, straight into the eyes of the country boy.
"Charlie," chided Mrs. Landis, "don't you be pokin' round in Martin's
room. And don't you tell him what you saw. He'd be awful put out. He
don't like to be teased. Ach, my," she shook her head and smiled to
Amanda, "with so many children it makes sometimes when they all get
talkin' and cuttin' up or scrappin'."