"The boys" no longer came to the table in their shirt-sleeves, for
Melinda always had their coats in sight, just where it was handy to put
them on, and the trousers were slipped down over the boots while the
boys ate, and the soft brown Markham hair always looked smooth and
shining, and Mrs. Markham tidied herself a little before coming to the
table, no matter how heavy her work, and never but once was she guilty
of sitting down to her dinner in her pasteboard sun-bonnet, giving as an
excuse that her "hair was at sixes and sevens." She remembered seeing
her mother do this fifty years before, and she had clung to the habit as
one which must be right because they used to do so in Vermont.
Gradually, too, there came to be napkins for tea, and James' Christmas
present to his wife was a set of silver forks, while John contributed a
dozen individual salts, and Andy bought a silver bell, to call he did
not know whom, only it looked pretty on the table, and he wanted it
there every meal, ringing it himself sometimes when anything was needed,
and himself answering the call. On the whole, the Markhams were getting
to be "dreadfully stuck up," Eunice Plympton's mother said, while Eunice
doubted if she should like living there now as well as in the days of
Ethelyn.
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