One of the cabs drew up at Miss Reba’s door.
She got out, followed by a thin woman in sober, severe clothes and gold nose-glasses, and a short plump woman in a plumed hat, her face hidden by a handkerchief, and a small bullet-headed boy of five or six.
The woman with the handkerchief continued to sob in snuffy gasps as they went up the walk and entered the lattice.
Beyond the house door the dogs set up a falsetto uproar.
When Minnie opened the door they surged about Miss Reba’s feet.
She kicked them aside.
Again they assailed her with snapping eagerness; again she flung them back against the wall in muted thuds.
“Come in, come in,” she said, her hand to her breast.
Once inside the house the woman with the handkerchief began to weep aloud.
“Didn’t he look sweet?” she wailed.
“Didn’t he look sweet!”
“Now, now,” Miss Reba said, leading the way to her room, “come in and have some beer.
You’ll feel better.
Minnie!”
They entered the room with the decorated dresser, the safe, the screen, the draped portrait.
“Sit down, sit down,” she panted, shoving the chairs forward.
She lowered herself into one and stooped terrifically toward her feet.
“Uncle Bud, honey,” the weeping woman said, dabbing at her eyes, “come and unlace Miss Reba’s shoes.”
The boy knelt and removed Miss Reba’s shoes.
“And if you’ll just reach me them house slippers under the bed there, honey,” Miss Reba said.
The boy fetched the slippers.
Minnie entered, followed by the dogs.
They rushed at Miss Reba and began to worry the shoes she had just removed.
“Scat!” the boy said, striking at one of them with his hand.
The dog’s head snapped around, its teeth clicking, its half-hidden eyes bright and malevolent.
The boy recoiled.
“You bite me, you thon bitch,” he said.
“Uncle Bud!” the fat woman said, her round face, ridged in fatty folds and streaked with tears, turned upon the boy in shocked surprise, the plumes nodding precariously above it.
Uncle Bud’s head was quite round, his nose bridged with freckles like splotches of huge summer rain on a sidewalk.
The other woman sat primly erect, in gold nose-glasses on a gold chain and neat iron-gray hair.
She looked like a school-teacher.
“The very idea!” the fat woman said.
“How in the world he can learn such words on a Arkansaw farm, I dont know.”
“They’ll learn meanness anywhere,” Miss Reba said.
Minnie leaned down a tray bearing three frosted tankards.
Uncle Bud watched with round cornflower eyes as they took one each.
The fat woman began to cry again.
“He looked so sweet!” she wailed.
“We all got to suffer it,” Miss Reba said.
“Well, may it be a long day,” lifting her tankard.
They drank, bowing formally to one another.
The fat woman dried her eyes; the two guests wiped their lips with prim decorum.
The thin one coughed delicately aside, behind her hand.
“Such good beer,” she said.
“Aint it?” the fat one said.
“I always say it’s the greatest pleasure I have to call on Miss Reba.”
They began to talk politely, in decorous half-completed sentences, with little gasps of agreement.
The boy had moved aimlessly to the window, peering beneath the lifted shade.
“How long’s he going to be with you, Miss Myrtle?” Miss Reba said.
“Just till Sat’dy,” the fat woman said.