"He 'ain't come home yet. I dun'no' where he is. He's been gone long
enough to draw ten cords of wood. I s'pose he's potterin' round
somewheres--stopped to talk to somebody, or something. I ain't going
to wait any longer. He'll have to eat his dinner cold if he can't get
home."

Elmira put the dish of stew on the table. Jerome drew his chair up.
Mrs. Edwards grasped the long-handled dipper preparatory to
distributing the savory mess, then suddenly stopped and turned to
Elmira.

"Elmira," said she, "you go into the parlor an' git the china bowl
with pink flowers on it, an' then you go to the chest in the spare
bedroom an' get out one of them fine linen towels."

"What for?" said Elmira, wonderingly.

"No matter what for. You do what I tell you to."

Elmira went out, and after a little reappeared with the china bowl
and the linen towel. Jerome sat waiting, with a kind of fierce
resignation. He was almost starved, and the smell of the stew in his
nostrils made him fairly ravenous.

"Give it here," said Mrs. Edwards, and Elmira set the bowl before her
mother. It was large, almost large enough for a punch-bowl, and had
probably been used for one. It was a stately old dish from overseas,
a relic from Mrs. Edwards's mother, who had seen her palmy days
before her marriage. Mrs. Edwards had also in her parlor cupboard a
part of a set of blue Indian china which had belonged to her mother.