Dishes

by Agnes Mary Brownell

Genre: Drama
Setting:
Format of Original Source: Short Story
Recommended Adaptation Length:

Candidate for Adaptation? Not Reviewed

EXCERPT:

Old Mrs. Bray in her fine gray-and-lavender gown was seated before her little wash-hand-stand. The floral pitcher in its floral bowl had been set to one side on the floor. What covered the towel-protected top of the stand, was Nellie’s looted treasure.

There were the fragments of the pink cup and saucer; the leaf-green and brown majolica bits that had been the pickle-dish; the iridescent curved sides of George’s wife’s lemonade-glass; Aunt Em’s shattered souvenir pitcher; Abbie Carter’s cracker-jar with its smashed wheat-heads. Myra only looked bewilderedly; but on Nell’s gaping face apprehension succeeded stupefaction and dissolved in its turn into a great brimming tenderness.

“Scold you, Mother? Oh, Mother–what must you think me! (Oh, poor Mother–poor Mother–she’s gone daft!)”

“I always admired pretty broken bits of chiny,” old Mrs. Bray confessed. “But the pitcher was a accident–reely it was, Nellie. I never went to let that fall. My arm breshed it. But the sasser and the pickle-dish and George’s wife’s lemonade-glass and Abbie Carter’s cracker-jar–I done them apurpose. And I can’t say I regret the pitcher, nuther.”

COMMENTS:

A strange little piece about a woman whose seemingly-senile mother communicates by smashing crockery. There’s a silly idea here, but no true plot. Perhaps a little sketch can be extracted from this trifle?

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