Edison Marshall

“ It isn't through any attempt to assert superiority that mama is saying what she is. You know we like to be alone, Ned; we don't want to have to include any one else in our conversation. We're a little trio here, and we don't need any one else. Tell the man to take away her plate.”
“Of course, if you prefer it.” Half ashamed of his reluctance, he called the negro and had the fourth plate removed. “Miss Gilbert will eat at the second table,” he explained. When the man had gone, Ned turned in appeal to Lenore. ”

“ Still they did not see Bess's bright face at the door.
The soup cooled, and Mrs. Hardenworth began to grow impatient. The girl was certainly late in responding to the dinner call! And now, because she was fully aroused, she was no longer willing to accept that which would have constituted, a few minutes before, a pleasant way out of the difficulty,—the failure of the seamstress to put in an appearance. The victorious foe, at white heat, demands more than mere surrender. The two women, fully determined as to Ned's proper course, were not willing the matter should rest. ”

“ Be sensible. When a seamstress comes to our house she doesn't eat at the table with us. Not at your house either. Perhaps you'd say that this was different, thrown together as we are on this little boat, but I don't see that it is different. I hope you won't mind my suggesting this thing to you. I've handled servants all my life—I know how to get along with them with the least degree of friction—and it's very easy to be too kind.”
Ned looked down, his manhood oozing out of him. “But she's a nice girl——”
“I don't doubt that she is,” Lenore interrupted him. “That isn't the point. ”

“ A wide grin cracking his cheeks, failing wholly to understand the real situation and assuming that “de boss” had relented in his purpose to exclude the seamstress from the first table, the colored man sped cheerfully away. Bess had already spoken kindly to him; Julius had deplored the order to remove her plate almost as a personal affront. And he failed to hear Ned's comment that might have revealed the situation in its true light. ”

“ In the first place it implanted a feeling of injury in Ned, whose habits of mind made him singularly open to suggestion; and in the second it left Mrs. Hardenworth with a distinct prejudice against Bess. She was in a decided ill-humor until tea time, when she again joined Ned and Lenore on the deck.
She was not able to resist the contagion of their own high spirits, and soon she was joining in their chat. Everything made for happiness to-day. ”