My
father-in-law never eats fish or poultry, so they only have either if
there is state company. There's one sacred apple pudding that's been
made every Wednesday for nineteen years, and if you can imagine
anything more positively dreadful than that, _I_ can't.
Every time, as soon as we sit down to the table, Grandmother Evarts
always begins, officially:
"Well, Charles Edward, my dear boy, we don't have you here very often
nowadays. I said to your mother yesterday that it was two whole weeks
since you had been to see her. What have you been doing with yourself
lately?"
And when he says, as he always does, "Nothing, grandmother," I know
she's disappointed, and then she starts in and tells what she has been
doing, and Maria--Maria always manages to be there when we are--Maria
tells what SHE has been doing, with little side digs at me because I
haven't been pickling or preserving or cleaning. Once, when I first
went there, Maria asked me at dinner what days I had for cleaning. And
I said, as innocently as possible, that I hadn't any; that I perfectly
loathed cleaning, and that we never cleaned at home! Of course it
wasn't true, but we never talk about it, anyway. Peter said he nearly
shrieked with joy to hear me come out like that.
It was almost as bad as the time I wore that sweet little yellow Empire
gown.
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