I had planned to have a lot of strange food and had ordered some things up from a caterer in the city, but I telephoned the express man not to deliver them until the next day, even if they did spoil.  How could I use soft shelled crabs when Mrs. Wade had sent me word that she was going to bake some brook trout by a recipe of the judge’s grandmother’s?  Mrs. Hampton Buford had let me know about two fat little summer turkeys she was going to stuff with corn-pone and green sage, and fillet mignon seemed foolish eating beside them.  But when the little bit of a baby pig, roasted whole with an apple in its mouth, looking too frisky and innocent for worlds with his little baked tail curled up in the air, arrived from Mrs. Caruthers Cain, I went out into the garden and laughed at the idea of having spent money for lobsters, to be shipped alive and to be served broiled in their own shells.

When I got back in the kitchen things were well under way, everything smelling grand, and Aunt Bettie in full swing matching up my dinner guests.

“Nobody in this town could suit me better than Pet Buford for a daughter-in-law and I believe I’ll have all the east rooms done over in blue chintz for her.  I think that would be the best thing to set off her blue eyes and corn silk hair,” she was saying as she cut orange peel into strips.

“You’ve planned the refurnishing of that east wing to suit the style of nearly every girl in Hillsboro since Tom put on long trousers, Bettie Pollard, and they are just as they have been for fifteen years since you did over the whole house,” said Mrs. Johnson as she poured a wine-glass half full from one bottle and added a tablespoonful from another.

“Well, I think he is really interested now from the way he danced most of his time with her down at the hotel the other night, and I have hopes I never had before.  Now, Molly, do put him between you and her, sort of cornered, so he can’t even see Ruth Chester.  She is too old for him.”  And Tom’s mother looked at me over the orange peel as to a confederate.

“Humph, I’d like to see you or Molly or any woman ‘corner’ Tom Pollard,” said Mrs. Johnson with a wry smile as she tasted the concoction in the wine-glass.

“I have to put him at the end of the table because he is my kinsman and the only host I’ve got at present, Aunt Bettie,” I said regretfully.  I always take every chance to rub in Tom’s and my relationship on Aunt Bettie, so she won’t notice our flirtation.

“I’d put John Moore at the head of the table if I were you, Molly Carter, because he’s about the only man you’ve invited that has got any sense left since you and that Chester girl took to visiting Hillsboro.  He’s a host of steadiness in himself and the way he ignores all you women, who would run after him if he would let you, shows what he is.  He has my full confidence,” and as she delivered herself of this judgment of Doctor John, Mrs. Johnson drove in all the corks tight and began to pound spice.