In the week that followed Mother’s return from Capitol City, she slipped back into the old routine with doubled energy, attending cheerfully all the meetings which she so gullibly believed she had missed in her dash for liberty.  But through it all one great event stood out with arc light brilliancy; that on Sunday, the family was to entertain company.

Entertaining company in itself was nothing unusual, the Sundays in which it occurred probably outnumbering those in which the family ate alone.  But on this coming June Sunday it was the guest-to-be, himself, who was out of the ordinary.

Specifically, he was to be Katherine’s company, but the family had been cautioned by mother that they were by no manner of means to refer to him as Katherine’s individual acquisition.

The coming guest, Keith Baldridge, was assistant professor of history in Katherine’s alma mater.  He was thirty-two and unmarried.  No, he was not Katherine’s fiancé – Katherine’s manner dared anyone to suggest it.  As a matter of fact, their friendship was at that very delicate state where the least breath might shrivel the emerging chrysalis, or blow it into a gorgeous-winged creature of Love.

In the meantime, it was going to be an awful strain on the family to have him come.  Mother was already feeling the effects of Katherine’s attempts to make over the entire family in the four days intervening before his arrival.

“How long’s Bald Head goin’ to stay?” Junior wanted to know at the supper table in the middle of the week. 

“There he goes, Mamma,” Katherine said plaintively.  “Can’t you keep him from saying those horrid things?”

“My son,” Father addresses him from the head of the table, “have you ever heard of the children in the Bible who were eaten by bears when they said, ‘Go up, thou bald head’?  Junior grinned appreciatively, realizing he was not being very violently reproved.

“If you could just know, Mamma, how different the Baldridge home is from ours?”  Katherine was in the kitchen now, assisting Mother and Tillie.  “Our family is so talkative and noisy, and laughs over every little silly thing and there is so much confusion.  Why, at their dinners – besides Professor Baldridge there’s just his father and an aunt, both so aristocratic—at their dinners it's so quiet and the conversation is so enlightening—about Rodin, and—and Wagner—and, oh, maybe Milton's "II Penseroso"—you know what I mean—so much more refined."

At that word, Mother had an unholy desire to recall to the polished, critical girl before her the days when she used to hang, head downward, from the apple tree, her abbreviated skirts obediently following the direction of her head. But she forbore. Mothers are like that.

"And I wish you could see their house. It's not as big as ours, and really no nicer, but, oh! the atmosphere! The hangings are gray or mauve or dark purple—and they keep the shades down so much lower than ours—so it's peaceful, you know, like twilight all the time.

"My stars! Ain't that a gloomy way to live, and unhealthy, too, I must say." It was Tillie speaking acridly with the familiarity which comes from having braided a little girl's hair and officiated at the coming out party of her first tooth.

"And pictures!" Katherine went on, ignoring Tillie's disgusted remark. "Why, folks, in one room there's just one, a dull dim, old wood scene, and so artistic. You can imagine how Papa's bank calendar in our dining room just makes me sick. And they have a Japanese servant. You never hear him coming, but suddenly he's right there at your elbow, so quiet and—"

"My good land! How spooky!"

"Oh, Tillie, no! It's the most exquisite service you ever saw—to have him gliding in and out and anticipating your every wish."

"Well, Kathie, I'll wait table for you, and glad to, but I ain't goin' to do no slippin' around like that heathen, as if I was at a spiritual seance, I can promise you that."

"Thank you, Tillie, and, Tillie, when you pass things to him, please don't say anything to him, he's so used to that unobtrusive kind of being waited on—and he's so quiet and reserved himself."

"Well, if I had a glum man like that, I'd mop the floor with him." Tillie was always going to mop the floor with some one.

At that, Katherine left the kitchen with dignity, which gave Tillie a chance to say, "Ain't she the beatenest! I declare, she riles me so this week!" To which Mother replied, "Don't be too hard on her, Tillie. It's exasperating, I know; but she's nervous. Sakes alive! Don't I remember to this day just how I felt sitting around in a new lavender lawn dress thinking Henry might come. He had a pair of spotted ponies, and went driving furiously past our farm for three different evenings before he had the courage to stop." And Mother laughed at the recollection.

It was a characteristic of Mother's—this being able to project herself into another's personality. In the days that followed she seemed to live a Jekyll-Hyde existence. She was her own exasperated self because of Katherine's constant haranguing about the way things ought to be, and she was Katherine, sensitive, easily affected, standing quiveringly in the wings of the stage at the Great Play—waiting for her cue.

Because of this trait, Mother had known, to her finger tips, the griefs and joys of each member of her family—how Father felt the year bank deposits dropped forty-five per cent, how Junior felt when he made the grammar Nine. Some call it sympathy. Others call it discernment. In reality, it is the concentrated essence of all the mother wisdom of the ages.

Mother was worried, too. She had never seen Keith Baldridge, and numerous questions of doubt filled her mind. What manner of man was this that lived in a house of perpetual twilight?

The family managed to live through Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The word Sunday seemed to have a portentous meaning, as though it were the day set apart for a cyclone, or something dreadful was to happen to the sun.

Professor Baldridge was coming in his car sometime in the morning. He had to leave in the afternoon, as he was to go around by Miles City to get his aunt, who was visiting there, and take her home. In truth, that had been his excuse for coming at all.

It came—Sunday. To the Mason family it was "Der Tag." It proved to be a still, hot morning, full of humidity and the buzzing and bumbling of insects.

At the breakfast table Katherine gave the last of her multitudinous directions. "Mamma, I wish you'd muzzle Junior. Make him promise not to open his head."

"My child"—Mother's tone signified that it was making its last patient stand—"Junior shall be the pink of propriety, I assure you; but not for the President of the United States would I frighten one of my children into silence."

Simultaneously, Marcia and Eleanor hooted. "Imagine anybody being able to frighten Junior into silence!" was their combined exclamation.

After breakfast, Katherine, like General Pershing, reviewed her troops, the house and the grounds. From vestibule to back porch, through the big reception hall, library, living-room, sun-parlor, everything was immaculate. There was not a flicker of dust in the house. There was not a stick or dead leaf on the lawn.

Marcia, Eleanor, and Junior all trooped off to Sunday school and Father followed later to church, but Mother and Tillie stood by the guns, preparing ammunition in the form of salad and chicken. Katherine, who by this time was in such a palpitating state of heart that she could not assist intelligently at anything, went upstairs to dress.

When she had finished—she decided on white after having had on a pink and a pale green—she sat down on her cedar chest, with eyes glued on the driveway. For some time she sat there, starting up at the sound of every car. Then she saw someone turning in at the front walk. He was short and slightly stooped. He carried a cane, but seemed to hobble along without using it. He wore store clothes too large for him and a black, wide-brimmed felt hat over his white hair. It was Grandpa, Grandpa Warner, who lived with another daughter on his old home farm, and had evidently come to surprise Mother's family.

Katherine started up with a cry. Not that! Oh, not Grandpa today! It was too cruel! Why, Grandpa monopolized conversations with his reminiscences, and at the table he did unspeakable things with his knife.

The good fairy which is called Memory reminded Katherine of the days when she had slipped her hand into Grandpa's and gone skipping along with him through dewy, honey-sweet clover to drive the cows down to the lower pasture; days when she had snuggled down by him in the old homemade sleigh and been whirled through an elfland of snow-covered trees and ice-locked rivulets; days that seemed then to embody to her all the happiness that time could hold. But she turned coldly away from the wistful fairy, and looked bitterly out upon a day that was unconditionally spoiled.

Carrying herself reluctantly downstairs, she perfunctorily greeted the old man. Mother, the happy moisture in her eyes, was making a great fuss over him. Temporarily she had forgotten that such a personage as Keith Baldridge existed.

Back in a few moments to her room, Katherine continued her watchful waiting.

A car turned in at the driveway, a long, low, gray car and Keith Baldridge, in ulster and auto cap, stepped out. At the sight of the figure that was almost never out of her mind, she dropped on her knees by the cedar chest and covered her face with her hands, as though the vision blinded her. And those who think her only ridiculously sentimental do not understand how the heart of a girl goes timidly down the great White Road to meet its mate.

As for Mother, when Keith Baldridge grasped her hand, her own heart dropped from something like ninety beats to its normal seventy-two. He was big and athletic-looking, and under well-modeled brows shone gray-blue eyes that were unmistakably frank and kind. With that God-given intuition of Mother's she knew that he was clean—clean in mind and soul and body. And quite suddenly she wanted him for her girl, wanted him as ardently as Katherine herself. Well, she would do everything in her power to make his stay pleasant and to follow out Katherine's desires.

So she hurried to the kitchen to see that everything was just as she knew Katherine wanted it. She saw that the crushed fruit was chilled, that the salad was crisp, that the fried chicken was piping hot. The long table looked lovely, she admitted. Just before she called them in, Mother pulled the shades down part way, so that the room seemed "peaceful—you know, like twilight."

They all came trooping in, Father continuing what he had evidently begun on the porch, a cheerful monologue on the income tax law. Bob and Mabel, who had arrived with the new baby in the reed cab that Father had given them, held a prolonged discussion as to where the cab and its wonderful contents could most safely stand during dinner.

With that old-fashioned notion that "menfolks like to talk together," Mother placed Keith Baldridge and Bob and Grandpa up at the end of the table by Father.

As they were being seated, Father said in that sprightly way which always came to him when a royal repast confronted him, "What's the matter with the curtains?" Then walking over to the windows with the highly original remark, "Let's have more light on the subject," he snapped the shades up to the limit. The June sun laughed fiendishly at Mother as it flashed across the cut glass and china and the huge low bowl of golden nasturtiums. Mother felt like shaking Father, but of course she couldn't get up and jerk the shades down again, like Xanthippe or Mrs. Caudle.

Tillie, with an exaggerated tiptoeing around the table, began passing the plates as Father served them. Previously, there had been a little tilt between Mother and Katherine over the coffee, the latter wanting it served at the close of the meal, "like real people," but Mother had won with, "Father would just ask for it, Kathie, so what's the use?" And now Tillie was saying hospitably, "Will you have coffee, Mr. Bald—Bald—?" At which Junior snorted in his glass of water, and received the look of a lieutenant-colonel from Mother.

There was a little interval of silence as the dinner started, then Grandpa looked down the table toward Katherine and said in his old, cracked voice, "Well, Tattern!" It was her childish nickname, put away on the shelf with her dolls and dishes. It sounded particularly silly today. "What you goin' to do with yourself now you've graduated?"

"I'm going to teach in the Miles City High School, Grandfather." She had never said Grandfather before; he'd always been "Grandpa" to her, but the exigencies of the occasion seemed to call for the more dignified term.

"What you goin' to teach?"

"History," she said briefly, and flushed to the roots of her hair. Marcia and Eleanor exchanged knowing grins.

"Then git married, I s'pose, and hev no more use fer your history? That makes me think of somethin' that happened back in Illynois. It was a pretty big thing fer anybody from our neck of the woods to go to college, but Abner Hoskins went, and when he was 'most through he got drowned. At the funeral Old Lady Stearns walked round the casket and looked down at the corpse 'n' shook her head 'n' said: 'My! My! What a lot o' good larnin' gone to waste.'"

Everyone laughed. Katherine's own contribution to the general fund was of a sickly, artificial variety.

"You came here from Illinois at an early date, I suppose, Mr. Warner?" Keith Baldridge asked.

It was like a match to dynamite—no, like a match to a straw stack, a damp straw stack that would burn all afternoon. Grandpa looked as pleased as a little boy.

"Yes, sir—it was 1865. I fought with the old Illynois boys first, 'n' then I loaded up and come, with teams of course. That was a great trip, that was. Yes, sir! I mind, fer instance, how we crossed a crick with a steep bank, and the wagon tipped over, 'n' our flour—there was eight sacks—spilled in the water. Well, sir, would you believe them sacks of flour wasn't harmed, we got 'em out so quick? The water 'n' flour made a thin paste on the outside 'n' the rest wasn't hurt. I rec'lect the youngsters runnin' barelegged down the crick after Ma's good goosefeather pillows that was floating away."

Two scarlet spots burned on Katherine's cheeks. She raised miserable eyes that had been fixed steadily upon her plate to see Keith Baldridge looking at Grandpa in amazement. What was he thinking? Comparing Grandpa with his own father, dignified and scholarly?

On and on went Grandpa. "Yes, sir—the year I'm tellin' you about now was the year the grasshoppers come, 1874."

Marcia kicked Katherine under the table. "Same old flock has arrived," she whispered.

"They come in the fall, you know, 'n' et the corn, 'n' then the gol-durn things had the gall to stay all winter 'n' hatch in the spring. Why, there wasn't nothin' raised that summer but broom-corn 'n' sorghum-cane. You'd be surprised to know they left them two things." There was a great deal more information about the grasshoppers, and then: "Yes, sir, me'n Ma had the first sod house in Cass County. "N' poor! Why, Job's turkey belonged in Rockefeller's flock by the side o' us. I had one coat, 'n' Ma one dress, fer I don't know how long, 'n' Molly over there"—he pointed with his knife to Mother, who smiled placidly back—"Molly had a little dress made outen flour sacks. The brand of flour had been called 'Hellas,' like some foreign country—Eyetalian or somethin'. Ma got the words all outen the dress but the first four letters of the brand, 'n' there it was right across Molly's back 'H-E-L-L,' 'n' Ma had to make some kind o' knittin' trimmin' to cover it up."

Everyone laughed hilariously, Mother most of all. Junior shouted as though he were in a grandstand. Katherine gave a very good imitation of a lady laughing while taking a tablespoonful of castor oil.

"Well, Grandpa!" It was Father, when he could speak again. "She's had several dresses of later years that cost like that, but I never saw the word actually printed out on them."

Oh, it was awful! What would he think? He was laughing—but of course he would laugh! He was the personification of courtesy and tact. Talk about Wagner—"II Penseroso"—Rodin! To Katherine's sensitive mind there stood behind Keith Baldridge's chair a ghostly, sarcastically-smiling group of college professors, ministers, lawyers, men in purple knickers and white wigs and plume hats—gentlemen—aristocrats—patricians.

Behind her own chair stood sweaty farmers with scythes, white-floured millers, woodsmen with axes over their shoulders, rough old sea captains—common folks— plebeians.

Her heart was an icicle within her. All the old longing for Keith Baldridge, all the desire to be near him, died out. With a sickening feeling that she was living in a nightmare, she only wanted the day to be over, so that he would go home, so that she could go to the cool dimness of her own room and be alone.

The dinner was over. Father, with the same nonchalance that he would have displayed had he been dining the Cabinet members, walked coolly into the library, and with the automobile section of the paper over his face prepared to take his Sunday nap.

Katherine, unceremoniously leaving Mr. Baldridge to the rest of the family, slipped out to the kitchen to wipe dishes for Mother and Tillie.

"Why, Kathie, you go right back!" Mother insisted.

"Let me be," she said irritably. "I know what I want to do."

Mother, giving her eldest daughter a swift look, had a savage desire to take her across her knee and spank her, even as in days of yore.

The work done, Katherine walked slowly up the back stairs, bathed and powdered her flushed face, and with a feeling that life held nothing worthwhile went down to join the family. As she stopped in the vestibule and surveyed the scene, it seemed to her that it could not have been worse.

The porch seemed as crowded with people as a street fair. Father had finished his nap, and was yawning behind his paper. Eleanor's entire crowd of high school girls had stopped for her to take the Sunday afternoon walk which took place whether the thermometer stood at zero or 102 degrees in the shade. They were all sitting along on top of the stone railing like a row of magpies.

Bob was wheeling the baby up and down, Mabel watching him, hawk-eyed, as though she suspected him of harboring intentions of tipping the cab over. Mother, red faced from the dinner work, was calling cheerily to a neighbor woman, "You've lots of grit to get out in this hot sun." Marcia, in the living-room, had just finished "The Mill on the Cliff" record, and was starting "The Sextette from Lucia," the fanfare of the trumpets literally tearing the air.

Grandpa, for Keith Baldridge's benefit, was dilating on the never-ending subject of grasshoppers. As he paused, Tillie, in her best black silk, came around the corner of the porch and sat down near the guest with "Be you any relation to the Baldridges down in East Suffolk, Connecticut?" (Oh, what would he think of Tillie, who had waited on him, doing that?) Junior, on the other side of Mr. Baldridge, was making frantic attempts to show him a disgusting eel in an old fish globe that was half full of slimy green water. Even the Maltese cat was croqueting herself in and out through Professor Baldridge's legs. To Katherine's hypersensitive state of mind, the confusion was as though all Chinatown had broken out.

With a feeling of numb indifference, she stepped out on the porch. Keith Baldridge rose nimbly to his feet. "Now, good people," he said pleasantly, apparently unabashed, "I'm going to take Miss Katherine away for a while in the car. You'll all be here, will you, when I get back?"

Katherine went down the steps with him, no joy in her heart—nothing but a sense of playing her part callously in a scene that would soon end.

It was outrageously hot in the car. "How about going where it's cooler. Is there some woodsy place around here?" he wanted to know.

So Katherine obediently directed him to Springtown's prettiest picnic spot and, almost without conversation, they made a run for its beatific shade. As they walked over to the bank of the river, the man said, "I’m certainly elated over the find I made today."

"Find?" Katherine questioned politely. "Yes—your grandfather. He's a wonderful man. He's promised to come to my home next week and stay several days with me. He's just what I've been looking for, an intelligent man who has lived through the early history of the state and whose memory is so keen that he can recall hundreds of anecdotes. I am working on a history of the state, and my plan is to have it contain stories of vividness and color, little dramatic events which are so often omitted from the state's dull archives. From the moment he began to talk I realized what a gold mine I had struck. I could scarcely refrain from having a pad and pencil in my hand all the time I was listening to him. Why, he's a great character— one of the typical pathfinders—sturdy, honorable, and lovable. You must be very proud of him."

"I—am," said Katherine feebly.

"Take, for instance, my chapter on the early political life of the state. Do you know he told me that one election day, when it came time for the polls to close, everyone in the locality had voted but himself. He was miles away, hauling merchandise home from the river. A man got on a horse, rode over into the next county to meet him, then they exchanged places, your grandfather hurrying home on horseback while they held open the polls for him. It so happened that when the votes were counted, there had been a tie and, of course, his vote had decided the issue. Now, isn't that rich?"

Miss Mason acknowledged that it was.

"I'm a little cracked on the subject of these old pioneers," he went on. "To me they were the bravest, the most wonderful people in the world. Look at it!" He threw out his arm to the scene beyond the river. Before them, like a checkerboard, stretched the rolling farmland of the great Mid-West: brown squares of newly plowed ground; vivid green squares of corn; dull green squares where alfalfa was growing! Snuggled in the cozy nests of orchards were fine homes and huge barns. The spires of three country churches pointed their guiding fingers to the blue sky.

"Think of it! To have changed an immense area of Indian-inhabited wild land into this! Visualize to yourself, in place of what you see, a far-reaching stretch of prairie land on every side of us, with only the wild grass rippling over it. Now imagine this: you and I are standing here alone in the midst of it, with nothing but a prairie schooner containing a few meager necessities by our side. We're here to stay. From this same prairie we must build our home with our own hands, wrest our food, adequately clothe ourselves. It is to be a battle. We must conquer or be conquered. Would you have courage to do it? He turned to her with his fine, frank smile. And into Katherine Mason's heart came the swift, bittersweet knowledge that she could make sod houses and delve in the earth for food and kill wild animals for clothing—with Keith Baldridge.

"And this," he went on again, indicating the landscape, "this is our heritage from the pioneers. From sod houses to such beautiful homes as yours! I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed being in your family today. It's the typical happy American family. When I think of my own gloomy boyhood, I could fight some one— a lonesome, motherless little tad studying manners and 'Thanatopsis' under a tutor. Yours is the kind of home I've always wanted. It's the kind of home I mean to have when—if—I marry—all sunshine— and laughter—and little children—"

He turned to her suddenly and caught her hands. "It was to talk about that home that I brought you out here. With my whole heart—I love you—Katherine—"

It was late afternoon when the long gray car turned into the Mason driveway and stopped at the side lawn. In fact, it was so much later than Keith Baldridge had planned to leave that he only took time to run up to the porch to say good-by to them all. If he expected the Masons to sit calmly on the porch when he should drive away, he did not yet know the Masons. One and all, excepting Grandpa, who stayed in his rocker, they followed him down the steps, flocking across the green sloping lawn to where his car stood. The cat, seeing the entire family trooping in one direction, came bounding across the yard, tail in air, and rubbed herself coquettishly against the departing guest's trousers. She may have been of a curious disposition, that cat; but she was the soul of hospitality.

Tillie came running from the back of the house with a shoebox tied with a string. "It's some chicken sandwiches and cake," she explained. "Come again. I'll fry chicken for you any day."

Keith Baldridge beamed at her, and shook her rough hand vigorously. "I'm mighty glad to hear you say that, for you're going to have a chance to do that very thing next Sunday."

They all shook hands with him a second time. He got into the car and pressed the button that give life to the monster. The wheels seemed quivering to turn. Just then Grandpa rose from his chair on the porch and excitedly waved his cane. "Say!" he called. He came hobbling over the grass, the late summer sun touching his scraggly gray hair. "Wait a minute, Mr. Baldridge!"

They all turned to watch him apprehensively, he seemed so hurried and anxious. He was close to the family group now. "Say! Mr. Baldridge! I jes' happened to think of some-thin' else about them darned grasshoppers!"

They all shouted with laughter—all but Katherine, for she was not there. She had slipped into the front door and up to her room. There she dropped on her knees by the side of her bed and made a fervent little prayer to the God of Families. And her prayer was this: that some day—if she lived humbly for the rest of her life—she might be purged from the sin of having been, even in thought, disloyal to Her Own.

Then, hearing the family back on the porch, she rose from her knees and went into the hall. There she leaned over the banister and called: "Mother! Come up here. I want you."

Bess Streeter Aldrich, born in 1881, was a prolific writer whose works were published between 1898-1959. Her widely read novels made the bestsellers lists and her short stories appeared in McCalls, Ladies Home Journal and Harper's Weekly. This story is excerpted from the book "Mother Mason" and is used by permission of the Bess Streeter Aldrich estate.