"Of course I'm here," retorted Mrs Jim. "Am I so transparent that there's any doubt?"
"It's a long time since you remembered my existence," snapped Aunt Becky. "But the jug is bringing more things in than the cat."
"Oh, I don't want your jug, I'm sure," lied Mrs Jim. Everybody knew she was lying. Only a very foolish person would lie to Aunt Becky, to whom nobody had ever as yet told a lie successfully. But then Mrs Jim Trent lived at Three Hills, and nobody who lived at Three Hills was supposed to have much sense.
"Got your history finished yet, Miller?" asked Aunt Becky.
Old Miller Dark looked foolish. He had been talking for years of writing a history of the clan, but had never got started. It didn't do to hurry these things. The longer he waited the more history there would be. These women were always in such a confounded hurry. He thankfully made way for Palmer Dark, who was known as the man who was proud of his wife.
"Looks as young as ever, doesn't she?" he demanded beamingly of Aunt Becky.
"Yes... if it's any good to look young when you're not... " conceded Aunt Becky, adding by way of a grace note, "Got the beginnings of a dowager's cushion, I see. It's a long time since I saw you, Palmer. But you're just the same, only more so. Well, well, and here's Mrs Denzil Penhallow. Looking fine and dandy, too. I've always heard a fruit diet was healthy. I'm told you ate all the fruit folks sent in for Denzil when he was sick last winter."
"Well, what of it? HE couldn't eat it. Was it to be wasted?" retorted Mrs Denzil. Jug or no jug, SHE wasn't going to be insulted by Aunt Becky.
Two widows came in together... Mrs Toynbee Dark, who had had her mourning all ready when her third and last husband had died, and Virginia Powell, whose husband had been dead eight years and who was young and tolerably beautiful, but who still wore her black and had vowed, it was well known, never to marry again. Not, as Uncle Pippin remarked, that any one was known to have asked her.
Aunt Becky let Mrs Toynbee off with a coldly civil greeting. Mrs Toynbee had been known to go into hysterics when snubbed or crossed, and Aunt Becky did not intend to let any one else usurp the limelight at her last levee. But she gave poor Virginia a jab.
"Is your heart dug up yet?"
Virginia had once said sentimentally, "My heart is buried in Rose River churchyard," and Aunt Becky never let her forget it.
"Any of that jam left yet?" asked Aunt Becky slyly of Mrs Titus Dark, who had once gathered blueberries that grew in the graveyard and preserved them. Lawyer Tom Penhallow, who had been found guilty of appropriating his clients' money, was counted less of a clan disgrace. Mrs Titus always considered herself an ill-used woman. Fruit had been scarce that year... she had five men to cater for who didn't like butter... and all those big luscious blueberries going to waste in the lower corner of the Bay Silver graveyard. There were VERY few graves there; it was not the fashionable part of the graveyard.
"And how's your namesake?" Aunt Becky was asking Mrs Emily Frost. Kennedy Penhallow, who had been jilted by his cousin Emily, sixty- five years before, had called his old spavined mare after her to insult her. Kennedy, happily married for many years to Julia Dark, had forgotten all about it, but Emily Frost, née Penhallow, had never forgotten or forgiven.
"Hello, Margaret; going to write a poem about this? 'Weary and worn and sad the train rattled on.'" Aunt Becky went off into a cackle of laughter and Margaret Penhallow, her thin, sensitive face flushing pitifully and her peculiarly large, soft, grey-blue eyes filling with tears, went blindly to the first vacant chair. Once she had written rather awful little poems for a Summerside paper, but never after a conscienceless printer had deleted her punctuation marks, producing that terrible line which haunted the clan forever afterwards like an unquiet ghost which refused to be laid. Margaret could never feel safe from hearing it quoted somewhere with a snicker or a bellow. Even here at Aunt Becky's death-bed levee it must be dragged up. Perhaps Margaret still wrote poems. A little shell-covered box in her trunk might know something about that. But the public press knew them no more, much to the clan's thankfulness.
"What's the matter with you, Penny? You're not as good-looking as you generally believe you are."
"Stung on the eye by a bee," said Pennycuik Dark sulkily. He was a fat, tubby little fellow, with a curly grey beard and none-too- plentiful curly hair. As usual, he was as well-groomed as a cat. He still considered himself a gay young wag, and felt that nothing but the jug could have lured him into a public appearance under the circumstances. Just like this devilish old woman to call the attention of the world to his eye. But he was her oldest nephew and he had a right to the jug which he would maintain, eye or no eye. He always felt that his branch of the family had been unjustly done out of it two generations back. In his annoyance and excitement he sat down on the first vacant chair he spied, and then to his dismay discovered that he was sitting beside Mrs William Y., of whom he had the liveliest terror ever since she had asked him what to do for a child who had worms. As if he, Pennycuik Dark, confirmed bachelor, knew anything about either children or worms.
"Go and sit in that far corner by the door so that I can't smell that damn' perfume. Even a poor old nonentity like myself has a right to pure air," Aunt Becky was telling poor Mrs Artemas Dark, whose taste in perfumes had always annoyed Aunt Becky. Mrs Artemas DID use them somewhat too lavishly, but even so, the clan reflected as a unit, Aunt Becky was employing rather strong language for a woman... especially on her death-bed. The Darks and the Penhallows prided themselves on keeping up with the times, but they were not so far advanced as to condone profanity in a woman. THAT was still taboo. The joke of it was that Aunt Becky herself had always been down on swearing and was supposed to hold in special disfavour the two clansmen who habitually swore... Titus Dark because he could not help it and Drowned John Penhallow, who could help it but didn't want to.
The arrival of Mrs Alpheus Penhallow and her daughter created a sensation. Mrs Alpheus lived in St. John and happened to be visiting her old home in Rose River when Aunt Becky's levee was announced. She was an enormously fat woman, with a rather deplorable penchant for wearing bright colours and over-rich materials, who had been very slim and beautiful in a youth during which she had been no great favourite with Aunt Becky. Mrs Alpheus expected some unpleasant greeting from Aunt Becky and meant to take it with a smile, for she wanted badly to get the jug, and the walnut bed into the bargain, if the fates were propitious. But Aunt Becky, though she said to herself that Annabel Penhallow's dress was worth more than her carcass, let her off very leniently with,
"Humph! Smooth as a cat's ear, just as always," and looked past her at Nan Penhallow, about whom clan gossip had been very busy ever since her arrival in Rose River. It was whispered breathlessly that she wore pyjamas and smoked cigarettes. It was well known that she had plucked eyebrows and wore breeches when she rode or "hiked," but even Rose River was resigned to that. Aunt Becky saw a snaky hipless thing with a shingle bob and long barbaric ear-rings. A silky, sophisticated creature in a smart black satin dress who instantly made every other girl in the room seem outmoded and Victorian. But Aunt Becky took her measure on the spot.
"So this is Hannah," she remarked, hitting instinctively on Nan's sore spot. Nan would rather have been slapped than called Hannah. "Well... well... well!" Aunt Becky's "wells" were a crescendo of contempt mingled with pity. "I understand you consider yourself a modern. Well, there were girls that chased the boys in my time, too. It's only names that change. Your mouth looks as if you'd been making a meal of blood my dear. But see what time does to us. When you're forty you'll be exactly like this"... with a gesture towards Mrs Alpheus' avoirdupois.