Mrs. Hunter brought them back to realities.
“Oh, there you are, little chickabiddies,” she cooed. “Come along, I’ve fixed a cute little table for you two where you can be to yourselves and where you won’t be bothered by us old folks.”
Hilda gave Mimi a fleeting, wry smile at the blundering condescension of the dowager-like hostess.
“Looks just like a battleship trying to be cute,” whispered Hilda. Mimi rewarded her with a spontaneous but subdued little laugh as they followed Mrs. Hunter into the dining-room.
As they sat at the table near the huge bay window Hilda told Mimi in whispers about the women who chattered and ate at the large table.
“That skinny one over there,” pointing to the woman who had been telling of the ejection of Hilda’s mother from the theatre, “is Mrs. Watkins. Her husband’s a doctor and he was crazy about mamma but she didn’t like him like she did daddy. They say,” and here Hilda leaned across the table and whispered, “that Dr. Watkins is still in love with mamma and it makes Mrs. Watkins furious. She doesn’t like mamma and the main reason, I think, is because mamma is so much better-looking and knows so much more.”
Mimi wriggled ecstatically at this revelation. She felt the delicious sense of being a conspirator, as the repository of a secret told only to one very dear and close.
“That one with the gold tooth who laughs all the time is the wife of a schoolteacher—her name’s Mrs. Tompkins—she’s been to New York twice—but it didn’t seem to do her any good. She laughs as much as ever and hasn’t anything new to talk about except the new clothes she’s bought and how she and her husband could go to all the shows in New York and sit in any part of the theatre they wanted to.”
Mimi, as discreetly as she could, turned and surveyed her of the gold tooth. She was not very impressed—she expected anyone who had twice been to New York to have some distinguishing mark or characteristic which revealed two journeys to Manhattan. Mimi did not know what form this mark should have taken, she only felt that Mrs. Tompkins should have differed in some way from those who had not journeyed so far.
The cataloguing was interrupted by Hilda, who asked suddenly, and to Mimi with an eagerness which she could not at the time fathom, if Mimi had met Carl Hunter.
“Mamma tells me I’m a silly little goose,” proceeded Hilda when Mimi told her she had not met their hostess’ son, “but Carl’s the most thrilling boy in Atlanta. He’s seventeen and not a bit like the other boys around here—they’re so—so babyish. But Carl’s different and mamma says he doesn’t get along any too well with his mother and father—his father wants Carl to study insurance and banking and Carl doesn’t want to.”
“Does he know you’re—that you like him so?” asked Mimi.
“Ooh-no!” gasped Hilda. “But he is different—” she ended. …
That night Mimi told Jean of the things she had seen and heard during the afternoon. To her piquant recital of the things said and done and to the vivid little pictures, each etched so graphically and clearly Jean could see the women and their mannerisms, he listened eagerly.
“And how did Mary seem to like it?” he asked.
“She was right at home! I heard her tell two or three of them she just adored Atlanta—reminded her of her Chicago—and so different from that sleepy old New Orleans!” Mimi grimaced. …
“I’m happy you’ve found Hilda,” Jean told her. “You need the companionship of young people—when you’re as old as I it won’t be so easy to find somebody whose ideas fit in with your own.”
“How are things going at the office?” asked Mimi, remembering that she in her excitement had almost forgotten him and his affairs.
“About as well as can be expected—better than I thought they would,” he answered. “They’re a fine bunch—very much in earnest—and I suppose I’ll have to admit Mary and her father are right—they do put things over. Mr. Hunter’s the best of the lot—and, well, I suppose in time I’ll get myself fitted into the groove—” he ended lamely.
“You’re whistling in the dark to keep up your courage!” Mimi challenged him. “You’re not happy here and you never will be.”
“Not entirely so, I am afraid, but—well, I’ll be contented after a fashion,” Jean smiled bravely. “I miss the old houses, the old ways. I’d give anything almost to walk once more down to the Basin, to sit in St. Louis cemetery—do you remember the gold and green lizards scampering round, in and out of the vines over the graves, that day we walked and talked there, Mimi? I miss the calmness, the placidity, the smell of the water. Here things are rushing, bustling, matter-of-fact. I feel as if some power has pulled me out of a quiet pool where I was lying on my back floating on the water and thrown me head first into a deadly revolving whirlpool.
“And what are they getting out of all this, these minnows who are squirming and fighting each other?” he demanded with the old gesture of questioning she knew so well. “Here are these coloured people with the gifts from God of laughter and song and of creative instincts—do you remember that man who sang as he went past the house our first night in Atlanta?—and what are they doing with it? They are aping the white man—becoming a race of moneygrubbers with ledgers and money tills for brains and Shylock hearts.”
“But, papa Jean, they’ve got to
