Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 7, 1928 — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE RESPECTABLE ‘gilt-edged plates. The best tablecloth in the house was spread snow white under the whole arrangement. Viola hesitated. She did not want to interrupt Albert and Millicent in their dancing, and so appear to them like a jéalous little cat of a wife who had to watch her spouse every minute, and yet she knew that if she went in the other direction, to the kitchen, Kate, although apparently objecting, would let her help serve the food, guest or no guest. George solved her momentary dif- ficulty by coming in and leading her off into an awkward fox trot. They danced in through the portiéres, and, as Viola was swung around by the go- rilla, she saw Albert and Millicent off in one corner, going through prepos- terous contortions. Albert was making a fool of him- self, trying to do the latest variation of that crazy dance, and Millicent, half bent over, was clapping her hands and tapping her feet and swaying from side to side like an African native in a sacri- ficial stunt. Then something went wrong with the radio, and at the sarne moment Kate called hoarsely from the dining room that dinner was ready. They all filed back through the curtains. A leg of lamb, roasted, was steam- ing on a platter in the center of the table. Baked sweet potatoes were heaped in a bowl. Gravy, in an or- nate pitcher, stood near the meat, and there was spinach in another bow], al- most overflowing. George sat down first. He was still coatless. With his elbows spread on the table, he looked big enough to eat up the meat himself. His large wife sat down at his left and began to carve. “ Sit beside me, Mrs. Wade,” in- vited Kate, gesturing with the carving knife. She still had her apron on, and her broad face was flushed from bend- ing over the range in the hot kitchen. Viola obeyed, and sat down primly, her hands in her lap. It may have been MANIACS, 39 a mere chance that caused Albert and Millicent to be placed together on the other side—Viola was not sure. Albert looked nervous, yet pleased, and Millicent, amazingly bold about her liking for him, mothered him by helping him to the spinach and sweet. potatoes. Viola was served last. “ Gravy, Al-bert ?” cooed Millicent.' “Mrs. Wade, you've got the sweetest hubby; he eats everything!” Viola smiled like an idiot, hating herself and everything, and wishing that she could yank Miss Rawley’s crescent curl that curved over her ear. “Bread, Al-bert?’ asked Millicent. “D’yuh like the first cut,. Mr.} Wade?” Kate wanted to know. Oho! So both of them were trying to be attentive to Al. Hmph! Viola cast down her eyes and inserted her, fork into a sweet potato with a mali- cious, murderous pleasure—as if it were the potato’s fault. All through that horrible meal she was forced to disregard politely Al- bert’s popularity with these two ac- quisitive females. George, burrowing deep in his heaped-up plate, seemed oblivious to it all. The conversation was all directed at Viola’s husband, and she felt herself out in the cold. It was the same way after dinner; when Millicent and Albert hilariously, cleared off the table, and Kate took Viola upstairs to admire the rooms.| George left the house to buy cigars. Surely it was all done deliberately, this segregation of Albert and Milly.’ Viola, as she watched it happen again and again during the evening, could not feel that it was coincidence each time, And so it was that, upstairs there with Kate, her ears strained for sounds of the laughter downstairs, and she pic- tured the two dancing, flirting—and necking, perhaps. “Don’t these people realize that I’m his wife?” she asked herself. “‘ Doesn’t that mean anything to them? I wonder what they take me for?” (E(0) .DOOKS TLE (EO)