Ceremony of the Innocent Read Online Free PDF Page B

you expect, your kind? Very well. I have guests; I am demeaning myself arguing with you, May Watson. You shall have your extra fifty cents today.” She glanced at Mrs. Jardin, and hesitated. “You can send your girl, Ellen, here tomorrow morning at six sharp, in this emergency. Seventy-five cents a week. We will try her out, at any rate. From six in the morning until Mrs. Jardin dismisses her at about seven. Is that settled at least?”
    “Yes,” said May. “It is settled.”
    Mrs. Porter turned briskly about and did not glance again at the staring and very vexed Mrs. Jardin. She lumbered rapidly from the kitchen to rejoin her family and her guests, her every movement expressing exasperation and disgust.
    “Well, you won,” said Mrs. Jardin to May, who was again squeezing her eyelids together, but now to control tears. “Never thought to see it happen. When Christmas comes, I’m going to get another dollar a month or she can look for somebody else. Maybe I should be thankful to you, May.”
    This new alliance startled May, and she opened damp eyes. “Starving folks to death, that’s what they’re doing,” she said in a quavering voice. “One of these days we’re not going to stand for it any longer.”
    “Amen,” said Mrs. Jardin, and she chuckled. “Get along with them strawberries, now. Dinner’s at five, same as usual on Sundays.” She playfully slapped May on her thin rump with the ladle, and burst into a shrill hymn, in a rollicking tempo again filled with apparent good humor:

    “Yes, we march to Beulah Land, Beulah Land,
    Yes, we march to Beulah Land, in the morning!”

    Beulah Land, thought May, her hands swiftly hulling the berries. Now, where’s that, I wonder? It’s not for my kind, anyway. Hell, more likely, when we got it here, too.
    During his wife’s short absence the Mayor had quickly poured a good quantity of rum into the glasses of his brother and his nephew. He winked at them. “Now fill them up with that damned lemonade,” he said. He was as stout as his wife, but shorter and of a better temper. But he was no less exploitative. His hair was thick and white and silky and he dressed with rich style on Sundays, though he wore decorous black suits during the week in his offices. Today his cravat was broad and held a diamond pin, and his coat was of a gray and white large check, which he considered “sporty,” and his trousers were a gleaming white.
    “Where’s Jeremy?” asked the Mayor’s nephew, Francis Porter.
    Mrs. Porter emerged onto the veranda, frowning, but at the sound of her son’s name she smiled deeply and with pride. “He is having dinner with the undertaker’s niece, from Scranton,” she said. “Her father owns the biggest ironworks there, and she is an only child, like our dear Jeremy. We have hopes,” she added archly, seating herself in a huge wicker chair and sighing softly. “This is the second summer, and I believe the young people write to each other regularly. A very pretty girl, too, and well brought up.”
    “Speaking of pretty girls, I saw a beauty today,” said Francis. He was a tall and very slender young man with fine flaxen hair and open blue eyes, a very delicate complexion with a sharp flush on the high cheekbones, which gave him an interesting appearance, and a wide and gentle mouth. He was almost pretty himself, Mrs. Porter thought without generosity, for she resented the young man’s obvious if somewhat frail handsomeness, unlike her dear Jeremy’s “manly” aspect.
    “Oh?” said Mrs. Porter, arching her pale eyebrows, so sparse that they seemed hardly to be there at all. “Who, I wonder? There’s only one nearly pretty girl in this town.” Her mouth writhed as if with amusement, for she hated Preston, having come from Scranton herself. “Fairly comely. That is the Reverend Mr. Beale’s granddaughter, Amelia. Very nicely brought up, too, and well mannered. About fourteen?”
    “About that,” said Francis. His father, who