Love Bade Me Welcome Read Online Free

looked positively ancient. A thin fringe of aging yellow hair hung over her brow; the rest of her hair was knotted into a tight ball on the top of her head. She had a wizened, wrinkled little monkey face and bright brown eyes. Her shoulders were frightfully hunched, throwing her head forward at a perilous angle, as though she might tumble to the floor at any moment. “He had good taste, hadn’t he, Homer, eh?” she asked, smiling wickedly.
    “Excellent taste. We have placed you here on my left, Aunt Millie,” Homer said, helping her to her chair. She dragged her feet along the carpet at a laggardly gait. “And you, Davinia, on my right,” he added, drawing my chair out.
    “We’ll share him,” Millie said, laughing.
    Before she could say more, Jarvis spoke up. “We are uneven. We ought to have had Cousin Bulow to dinner.” He held Mrs. Winton’s chair while he spoke.
    “He has promised to come tomorrow to meet Davinia,” Homer said, taking his own place at the head of the table.
    “I get to say grace. You promised, Homer,” Miss Dennison said, like a child. “You said if I’d take a bath I could eat with Norman’s wife, and if I put my teeth in, I could say grace.”
    “Please go ahead,” Homer said, exchanging a mortified look with his Uncle Jarvis, while I swallowed a smile at his predicament. Senile relatives can be such a nuisance in a polite household, but I was happy to see she was tolerated with kindness. It spoke well of the family’s generosity. Homer threw one brief glance at me, to see how I was reacting. I smiled my compassion at him, my understanding and approval. Meanwhile, Millie began her grace.
    “Thank you, God, for this lovely looking meal,” she said, eyeing the table greedily. “May the roast be moist and the taties dry. May the sweets be choice, and the spirits high. There, I composed that specially for you, Davinia.”
    “That was lovely. I am honored,” I told her.
    “Why, you’re quite a poet, Miss Dennison,” Mrs. Winton remarked, with great condescension.
    “I am a genius,” Miss Dennison replied, in the same spirit. “Get cutting that roast up, Homer, and don’t give me the burnt end either. I can’t chew it with these demmed new teeth. I like mine pink and tender. Jarvis, pass along the horseradish and mustard or everything will be stone cold. Davinia, the first glass is for you,” she said, lifting her wineglass and gulping thirstily, after which she smacked her lips.
    “We are beginning with fish this evening,” Homer told her, in a repressive manner.
    “Damme. You can leave me out. I don’t want my throat full of bones that keep me coughing all night. I’ll have some of that bread and butter while the rest of you have fish. Pass the bread, Jarvis.”
    That was the end of Miss Dennison’s conversation for several minutes. While the rest of us ate fish and made small talk, she gorged on three slices of bread and butter, but still had her plate under Homer’s nose the instant he hit pink meat in his carving.
    “More, I can handle three slices since you’re shaving them so thin,” she told him. “No, better make it two. I want to leave room for the sweet. We are having a berry trifle, Davinia. I helped cook to make it. I whipped the cream all by myself.”
    “That’s nice. I like trifles,” I told her, pretending to find nothing amiss in her outspokenness.
    “You must watch your figure, Miss Dennison, or you will become stout,” Mrs. Winton chided.
    “Watch your own. You’d make two of me, with fat left over,” Miss Dennison told her bluntly, and truthfully too.
    “Aunt Millicent, that will be enough,” Homer said sharply. “You had better apologize to Mrs. Winton.”
    “Sorry dear. Only fooling,” Miss Dennison said, and laughed slyly.
    “That is quite all right, Sir Homer,” my companion said. “I take no account of such things. We met a little idiot boy in the roadway just as we came in. Woodie, he said his name was,” she added, to