T H E SC OUT MAST E R
383
It would sometimes be irksome to Virginia Ann that Mother
planned all of the meals around Father's special tastes. Rarely did
an evening meal come to our table, for instance, without there ap–
pearing on the menu either turnip salad or string-beans cooked in
ham fat . Aunt Grace had amused Virginia Ann mightily at breakfast
one morning by her response to Mother's complaint against the drud–
gery of planning meals. She had pulled a small daisy from the cen–
terpiece and offered it to Mother s:tying, "All you have to do is pluck
off the petals repeating, 'Turnip-greens-Beans. Turnip-greens–
Beans.' And so on till you get the answer." Virginia Ann had already
made this something of a sensitive subject with Mother who now
only closed her eyes and pressed down imaginary creases in the table
cloth with her small hand.
Father seemed no more amused than Mother by the suggestion
for deciding the menu and he chose that as the signal for him to
down the last of
his
coffee, pull his napkin loosely through his napkin
ring, and go into the living room to look for the morning paper.
Uncle Jake, too, rose from his chair. But he reached out and
took the daisy from Aunt Grace's hand and said slyly, "It's not a
bad suggestion, Grace. But you don't understand that she's just telling
her fortune the way clever women have always done. She pulls the
petals not saying. 'He loves me. He loves me not,' but saying, 'He
loves me. He loves me'.''
Aunt Grace laughed appreciatively, "Jake, how perfectly won–
derful."
But when the men had gone to work, Virginia
Ann,
being a little
out of humor that morning, said again that she
coul~
not see why
Mother had always to put Father's tastes before those of the children.
Mother turned to her and spoke finally,
"If
you don't know why,
Daughter, then let me tell you: Some fine day each of my children
will have a husband or a wife or some other equally absorbing and
wonderful interest in life that will take them away from me. And so
some fine day I shall have only your father's tastes to cater to. I
don't want there to be any doubt in his mind on that fine day that
he always came first at my table. I don't like the ·prospect of two old
souls' turning from loneliness to one another because their children
have left them."
"Well spoken,'' said Aunt Grace soberly. But presently she began
to laugh and said that she was reminded of the limerick "There was
an old lady of Romany whose husband ate nothing but hominy,'' and
Virginia Ann and Mother began to laugh too because her laughter
was so infectious.
