Losing Battles Read Online Free

yourself looking pretty and be ready for your husband.” The two younger sisters chanted it after her, smiling, “Keep your hands folded!”
    “Yes sir, you’re still here!” Uncle Noah Webster jumped heavily to the ground, ran around in front of Gloria and looked up the steps at her, slapping his hands down on his knees. “Cleo. two years ago this little bride was just as green as you are.” The fading mustaches hung like crossed pistols above his radiant smile, and he cried to Gloria, “Did any of ’em ever succeed in making you tell how you ever decided to marry into this ugly family in the first place?”
    “Here comes somebody new, just in time to stop her,” announced Aunt Cleo.
    Vaughn was driving up into the yard with the tables from the church dinner grounds thumping in the back of the wagon and a passenger sitting up on the seat beside him; for a minute all they could see of her was a stylish hat with a quill slanting up from the crown. Then she put her leg over with the high white man’s sock and the winter shoe.
    “That’s Mr. Renfro’s old maid sister Lexie. Oh, ever at the wrong time!” cried Miss Beulah, running out.
    The lady got down from the wagon in her Sunday dress, and reached up for a big oilcloth portmanteau and pulled it down herself.
    “I stood for an hour! I’d already walked as far as across the bridge, and I stood there at the store waiting on an offer of a ride. Some of you went right by me,” said Miss Lexie Renfro.
    “It’s that gripsack you’ve got along with you. They might wonder if they’d have you to carry from now on,” said Miss Beulah. “I’m not sure you can find any room left to set it down here.”
    “Everything I’ve got will fit right in there together.” said Miss Lexie. “Then I can tell myself I don’t have to go back if I don’t want to.”
    “Don’t take a bite out of Lexie, that’s a nice dog,” Miss Beulah told one of the shepherds and faced Miss Lexie as she came walking up the steps.
    “I borrowed a little bit of this and a little bit of that from her pantry, and made my donation to the reunion,” Miss Lexie said, poking around in her portmanteau and then handing out a flattish parcel.
    “What is it?” asked Miss Beulah before she’d take it.
    “A pound cake. It won’t kill anybody,” said Miss Lexie.
    Miss Beulah unwrapped it from the sheet of The Boone County Vindicator , and it was tied again in an old jelly-bag darkened with berry stains. She held it up by the drawstring.
    “Don’t everybody look at me like I’m the last thing of all,” Miss Lexie said. “My sister Fay hasn’t come, or her husband Homer Champion, I beat Nathan Beecham, and Brother Bethune’s not yet in sight. None of which surprises me.”
    “No, and Jack’s still got to come!” cried Miss Beulah.
    “Now that would surprise me,” said Miss Lexie.
    “He’s coming! And you needn’t ask me how I know it,” cried Miss Beulah.
    “What kind of a postcard did he manage to send you?” asked Miss Lexie.
    “My oldest boy never did unduly care for pencil and paper,” Miss Beulah retorted. “But you couldn’t make him forget Granny’s birthday Sunday to save your life. He knows who’s here and waiting on him—that’s enough!”
    Miss Lexie Renfro dipped her knees and tipped herself back, one tip. She didn’t make a sound, but this was her laugh.
    “Take your hat off, then, Lexie,” said Miss Beulah.
    “When I saw that hat coming, I thought—I thought you were going to be somebody else,” Gloria told Miss Lexie.
    “I’m wearing her Sunday hat. I make no secret of it. She’ll never need a hat again,” Miss Lexie said. “Miss Julia Mortimer’s out of the public eye for good now.”
    Mr. Renfro came forward to carry in her portmanteau. “You just come off and leave your lady, Lexie?” he asked his sister.
    “I may be more needed here than there, before the day gets over with,” she answered.
    Granny poked her shoe.
    “You a nurse?”