"Grammar, grammar," spoke Dwight Herbert Deacon. He was not sure what he
meant, but the good fellow felt some violence done somewhere or other.

"Well," said Di positively, "they _were_. Papa, see my favour."

She showed him a sugar dove, and he clucked at it.

Ina glanced at them fondly, her face assuming its loveliest light. She
was often ridiculous, but always she was the happy wife and mother, and
her rôle reduced her individual absurdities at least to its own.

The door to the bedroom now opened and Mrs. Bett appeared.

"Well, mother!" cried Herbert, the "well" curving like an arm, the
"mother" descending like a brisk slap. "Hungry _now?_"

Mrs. Bett was hungry now. She had emerged intending to pass through the
room without speaking and find food in the pantry. By obscure processes
her son-in-law's tone inhibited all this.

"No," she said. "I'm not hungry."

Now that she was there, she seemed uncertain what to do. She looked from
one to another a bit hopelessly, somehow foiled in her dignity. She
brushed at her skirt, the veins of her long, wrinkled hands catching an
intenser blue from the dark cloth. She put her hair behind her ears.

"We put a potato in the oven for you," said Ina. She had never learned
quite how to treat these periodic refusals of her mother to eat, but
she never had ceased to resent them.