"Now ain't that just too bad! (I s'pose she was touching it, for old times' sake--and her trembly old fingers and all, she let it slip.) Never mind, Mother; you got the blue one yet. And mebbe that saucer can be mended--"
Her mother with a jealous sweep of old hands, gathered up the fragments of the broken saucer. "I don't want mended dishes," she said resentfully, and went stiffly away to her room.
That night, when they were alone, Myra told Marvin about Nellie's cup and saucer. "And I just know she's akeeping of the pieces, and amourning over them," she finished. "Such things get to have associations. I 'most wish it had been your cup that got broke. She's got you, and Nellie's gone."
"Now don't you go getting notions in your head. Nell was a master hand for work, but she didn't keep things up a mite better than you--not so good, to my notion. You're restfuller. Nell couldn't rest herself nor let anybody else. Nell couldn't atouched them biscuit--fact!"
"I try to keep things up as much like Nell as I can. I'd ruther use white table-cloths myself, but Nell always used the checkered. And my own chiny set the folks gave me--but I know Mother'd feel strange without her old white ones. There's lots of pretty chiny in the safe, but Nell always used it so careful. I've never used a piece. And yet, just adustin' that pink cup I had to go and drop it! I don't s'pose it was ever drunk out of."
"What's the good," argued Marvin, "of having things too fine to use?"
"You and me, Marvin, think the same about them things. But Nell and Mother--they're different."
It pleased Myra to be told that she was good, and that her biscuits surpassed those of the capable Nell. But such compliments, for all their practicality and worth, sent no flush to her sallow cheek.
In her woman's magazine, which came to her monthly, lovers (and more rarely, husbands) were always breathing into the heroine's ear, "I love you. How beautiful you are!" or sentiments in that tenor. Marvin had not told her he loved her. He had asked her seriously and respectfully to marry him, when it became apparent that the efficient Nell was about to wed. And he had never told her that she was beautiful. She could not have believed him if he had.