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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Annals of Ann, by Kate Trimble Sharber
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Annals of Ann
-
-Author: Kate Trimble Sharber
-
-Illustrator: Paul J. Meylan
-
-Release Date: July 10, 2012 [EBook #40202]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANNALS OF ANN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Note:
-
-  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
-  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
-
-  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
-
-
-
-
-THE ANNALS OF ANN
-
-  [Illustration: Ann]
-
-
-
-
-The Annals of Ann
-
-_By_ KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER
-
-  WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
-  BY PAUL J. MEYLAN
-
-A. L. BURT COMPANY
-
-PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
-
-
-
-
-  COPYRIGHT 1910
-  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
-
-
-
-
-THE ANNALS OF ANN
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-
-My Cousin Eunice is a grown young lady and she keeps a diary, which
-put the notion into my head of keeping one too.
-
-There are two kinds of people that keep diaries, married ones and
-single ones. The single ones fill theirs full of poetry; the married
-ones tell how much it costs to keep house.
-
-Not being extra good in grammar and spelling, I thought I'd copy a few
-pages out of Cousin Eunice's diary this morning as a pattern to keep
-mine by, but I was disappointed. Nearly every page I turned to in hers
-was filled full of poetry, which stuff never did make good sense to
-me, besides the trouble it puts you to by having to start every line
-with a fresh capital.
-
-Cousin Eunice says nearly all famous people keep a diary for folks to
-read after they're dead. I always did admire famous people, especially
-Lord Byron and Columbus. And I've often thought I should like to be a
-famous person myself when I get grown. I don't care so much about
-graduating in white mull, trimmed in lace, as some girls do, for the
-really famous never graduate. They get expelled from college for
-writing little books saying there ain't any devil. But I should _love_
-to be a beautiful opera singer, with a jasmine flower at my throat,
-and a fresh duke standing at the side door of the theater every night,
-begging me to marry him. Or I'd like to rescue a ship full of drowning
-people, then swim back to shore and calmly squeeze the salt water out
-of my bathing suit, so the papers would all be full of it the next
-morning.
-
-Things don't turn out the way you expect them to, though, and I
-needn't count too much on these things. I might catch cold in my
-voice, or cramps in the sea and never get famous; but I'm going to
-keep this diary anyhow, and just hand it down to my grandchildren, for
-nearly _every_ lady can count on _them_, whether she's famous or
-infamous.
-
-Maybe some rainy day, a hundred years from now, a little girl will
-find this book in the attic, all covered with dust, and will sit down
-and read it, while the rain sounds soft and pattery on the outside,
-and her mother calls and calls without getting an answer. This is not
-at all the right way to do, but what can they expect of you when your
-attic is such a very delicious place? Ours is high enough not to bump
-your head, even if you are as tall as my friend, Rufe Clayborne, and
-where a part of the window-pane is broken out an apple-tree sends in a
-perky little branch. Just before Easter every year I spend nearly all
-my time up here at this window, for the apple blossoms seem to have so
-many things to say to me; lovely things, that I can _feel_, but can
-not hear, and if I could write them down this would be the most
-beautiful book in the world. And great sheets of rain come sometimes;
-you can see them coming from the hills back of Mr. Clayborne's house,
-but the apple blossoms don't mind the wetting.
-
-When I wrote "Mr. Clayborne" just then it reminded me of Cousin
-Eunice's diary. That was _one_ sensible word which was on every page.
-Sometimes it was mixed up close along with the poetry, but I always
-knew who she meant, for he is my best friend and the grandest young
-man I've ever seen out of a book. His other name is Rufe, and he's an
-editor when he's in the city. But before he got to be an editor he was
-born across the creek from our farm, and we've always been great
-friends. His father and mine are also friends, always quarreling about
-whose bird-dogs and hotbeds are the best; and our mothers talk a heap
-about "original sin" and chow-chow pickle.
-
-Maybe my grandchildren would like to know a few little things about
-me at the time I started keeping this diary for their sakes, so I'll
-stop now and tell them as quickly as I can, for I never did think just
-my own self was so interesting. If they have any imagination they can
-tell pretty well what kind of a person I was anyhow from the grand
-portrait I'm going to have painted for them in the gown I wear when
-I'm presented at court.
-
-Well, I was born in the year--but if I tell that you will know exactly
-how old I am, that is if you can count things better than I can.
-Anyhow, when I read a thing I'd rather they didn't tell just how old
-the heroine is. Then you can have her any age you like best. Maybe if
-I were to tell exactly how many birthdays I've had you would always be
-saying, like mother and Mammy Lou, "You're a mighty big girl to be
-doing such silly things." Or like Rufe says sometimes, "Ann, you're
-entirely too young to be interested in such subjects as that." So you
-will have to be satisfied when I tell you that I'm at the "gawky
-age." And a person is never surprised at anything that a girl at the
-"gawky age" does.
-
-I am little enough still to love puppies and big enough to love
-Washington Irving. You might think these don't mix well, but they do.
-On rainy mornings I like to take a puppy under one arm and _The
-Alhambra_ under the other, with eight or ten apples in my lap, and
-climb up in the loft to enjoy the greatest pleasure of my life. I
-sling _The Alhambra_ up on the hay first, then ease the puppy up and
-take the hem of my skirt between my teeth so the apples won't spill
-out while I go up after them. But I never even look at hay when
-there's a pile of cottonseed to wallow in.
-
-As to my ways, I'm sorry to say that I'm what mother calls a "peculiar
-child." Mammy says I'm "the curiousest mixtry she ever seen." That's
-because I ask "Why?" very often and then lots of times don't exactly
-believe that things are that way when they're told to me. One day at
-Sunday-school, when I was about four, the teacher was telling about
-Jonah. Mother often told me tales, some that I called "make-believe,"
-and others that I called "_so_ tales." When the teacher got through I
-spoke up and asked her if that was a "so tale." She said yes, it was,
-but I horrified every other child in the class by speaking up again
-and saying, "Well, me don't believe it!"
-
-Old as I am now, I don't see how Jonah's constitution could have stood
-it, but I've got sense enough to believe many a thing that I can't see
-nor smell nor feel. An old man out in the mountains that had never
-been anywhere might say he didn't believe in electricity, but that
-wouldn't keep your electric light bill from being more than you
-thought it ought to be at the end of the month.
-
-Speaking of bills reminds me of father. Father is not a rich man, but
-his folks used to be before the war. That's the way with so many
-people around here, they have more ancestry than anything else.
-Still, we have perfectly lovely smelling old leather books in our
-library, and when cotton goes high we go up to the city and take a
-suite of rooms with a bath.
-
-I am telling you all this, my grandchildren, to let you know that you
-have blue blood in your veins, but you mustn't let yours get too blue.
-Father says it takes a dash of red blood mixed with blue, like
-turpentine with paint, to make it go.
-
-Still, I hope the old place will be just as beautiful when my
-grandchildren get old enough to appreciate it as it is now, and not be
-sold and turned into a sanitarium, or a girls' school. The walls of
-the house are a soft grayish white, like a dear old grandmother's
-hair; and the mycravella roses in the far corner of the yard put
-_such_ notions into your head! There are rows of cedar trees down the
-walk, planted before Andrew Jackson's time; and at night there are the
-stars. I love stars, especially Venus; but there are a lot of others
-that I don't know the names of.
-
-Inside, the house is cool and shady; and you can always find a place
-to lie down and read. Cousin Eunice says so many people spoil their
-houses by selecting carpets and wall-paper that look like they want to
-fight. But ours is not like that. Some corners in our library look
-like _Ladies' Own Journal_ pictures.
-
-Cousin Eunice doesn't belong to our house, but I wish she did, for
-she's as beautiful as a magazine cover. And I think we have the nicest
-home in the world. Besides being old and big and far back in the yard,
-there's always the smell of apples up-stairs. And I'm sure mother is
-the nicest lady in the world. She wants everybody to have a good time,
-and no matter whether you're a man, a young lady, or a little girl,
-she lets you scatter your pipes, love-letters and doll-rags from the
-front gate to the backest chicken-coop without ever fussing. Mother
-admires company greatly. She doesn't have to perspire over them
-herself, though, for she has Mammy Lou to do all the cooking and
-Dilsey to make up the beds. So she invited Cousin Eunice to spend the
-summer with us and asked Bertha, a cousin on the other side, to come
-at the same time, for she said girls _love_ to be together. We soon
-found out, though, that some girls do and some don't.
-
-Cousin Eunice said I might always express my frank opinion of people
-and things in my diary, so I take pleasure in starting in on Bertha.
-Bertha, she is a _cat_! Even Rufe called her one the night she got
-here. Not a straight-out cat, exactly, but he called her a kitten!
-
-You see, when Bertha was down here on a little visit last year she and
-Rufe had up a kind of summer engagement. A summer engagement is where
-the girl wears the man's fraternity pin instead of a ring. And when
-she came again this time it didn't take them two hours to get summer
-engaged again, it being moonlight on the front porch and Bertha
-looking real soft and purry.
-
-Then the very next week Cousin Eunice came! And poor Rufe! We all
-felt _so_ sorry for him, for, from the _first_ minute he looked at her
-he was in love; and it's a terrible thing to be in love and engaged at
-the same time, when one is with _one_ girl and the other to another!
-And it was so plain that the eyes of the _potatoes_ could see it! But
-Bertha hadn't an idea of giving up anybody as good-looking as Rufe to
-another somebody as good-looking as Cousin Eunice, which mother said
-was a shame, and _she_ never did such a thing when _she_ was a girl;
-but Mammy Lou said it was no more than Rufe deserved for not being
-more careful.
-
-But anyway, Cousin Eunice and Bertha hadn't been together two days
-before they hated each other so they wouldn't use the same powder rag!
-They just couldn't bear the sight of each other because they could
-both bear the sight of Rufe so well. This was a disappointment to me,
-for I had hoped they would go into each other's rooms at night and
-brush their hair, half undressed, and have as good a time as the
-pictures of ladies in underwear catalogues always seem to be having.
-But they are not at all friendly. They have never even asked each
-other what make of corsets they wear, nor who operated on them for
-appendicitis. Bertha talks a great deal about Rufe and how devoted he
-was to her last summer, but Cousin Eunice won't talk at all when
-Bertha's around. She sits still and looks dumb and superior as a
-trained nurse does when you are trying to find out what it is that the
-patient has got.
-
-Cousin Eunice has a right to act superior, though, for while other
-girls are spending their time embroidering chafing-dish aprons she is
-studying books written by a man with a name like a sneeze. Let me get
-one of the books to see how it is spelled. N-i-e-t-z-s-c-h-e! There! I
-got it down at last! And Cousin Eunice doesn't have just a plain
-parlor at home to receive her beaux in; she has a studio. A studio is
-a room full of things that catch dust. And the desire of her life is
-to write a little brown-backed book that people will fill full of
-pencil marks and always carry around with them in their suit-cases.
-She doesn't neglect her outside looks, though, just because her mind
-is so full of great thoughts. No indeed! Her fountain pen jostles
-against her looking-glass in her hand-bag, and her note-book gets
-dusted over with pink powder.
-
-Now, Bertha is entirely different! No matter how the sun is shining
-outside she spends all her mornings up in her room shining her
-finger-nails; and she wears _pounds_ and _pounds_ of hair on the back
-of her head. Father says the less a girl has on the inside the more
-she will stick on the outside of her head, and lots of men can't tell
-the difference. Bertha certainly isn't at a loss for lovers. She gets
-a great many letters from a "commercial traveler." A "commercial
-traveler" is a man who writes to his girl on different hotel paper
-every day. These letters are a great comfort to her spirit when Rufe
-acts so loving around Cousin Eunice; and she always has one sticking
-in her belt when Rufe is near by, with the name of the hotel showing.
-
-Every night just before or just after supper I always go out to the
-kitchen and tell Mammy Lou all the news I've seen or heard that day.
-She laughs when I tell her about how Bertha is trying to hold on to
-Rufe.
-
-
-"'Tain't a speck o' use," she said to-night so emphatically that I was
-afraid the omelette would fall. "Why, a camel can dance a Virginny
-reel in the eye of a needle quicker than a gal can sick a man back to
-lovin' her after he's done took a notion to change the picture he
-wears in his watch!"
-
-Mammy told the truth, I'm sure, for Bertha has worn all her prettiest
-dresses and done her hair two new ways, trying to get him back; but he
-is still "coldly polite," which I think is the meanest way on earth to
-treat a person. Not that Bertha doesn't deserve it, for she knew they
-were just joking about that summer engagement, but she still wears
-the fraternity pin, which of course causes Cousin Eunice to be "coldly
-polite" to Rufe; and altogether we don't really need a refrigerator in
-the house this summer.
-
-Mammy Lou and I had been trying to think up a plan to thaw out the
-atmosphere, but this morning a way was provided, and I greatly enjoyed
-being "an humble instrument," as Brother Sheffield says.
-
-Everything was draggy this morning. Bertha was down in the parlor
-singing "popular songs" very loud as I came down the steps with my
-diary in my hand. I _despise_ popular songs! As I went past the
-kitchen door on my way to the big pear tree which I meant to climb and
-write in my book I saw that Mammy Lou was having the time of her life
-telling Cousin Eunice all about when Rufe was a baby. She had called
-her in there to get some fresh buttermilk, and Cousin Eunice was
-drinking glass after glass of it with such a rapt look on her face I
-knew she didn't realize that she couldn't get on her tight clothes
-till mid-afternoon.
-
-"Of _course_ he's a extry fine young man!" mammy said, dipping for
-another glassful. "There never was nary finer baby--an' wasn't I
-_right there_ when Mr. Rufe was born?"
-
-"Sure enough!" Cousin Eunice said, looking entranced.
-
-This wasn't much more entertaining to me than Bertha's singing, for I
-had heard it all so many times before, so I went out to the pear tree
-and climbed up, but I couldn't think of even one word that would be of
-interest to my grandchildren. So I just wrote my name over and over
-again on the fly-pages. I wonder what makes them call them
-"fly-pages?" Then I closed my book and climbed down again. I started
-back to the house by the side way, and met Rufe coming up the walk
-toward the front door.
-
-"Hello, Rufe," I said, running to meet him and walking with him to the
-front steps. "I'm so glad to see you. Everything is so draggy this
-morning. Won't you sit on the steps and talk to me a while? Or are you
-in a hurry?"
-
-"I'm always in a hurry when I'm going to your house," he answered with
-a look in the direction of Cousin Eunice's window. "And my visits
-always seem as short as a wedding journey when the bridegroom's salary
-is small."
-
-He dusted off the step, though, and sat down; and I told him that
-Cousin Eunice was drinking buttermilk in her kimono and wouldn't be in
-a mood to dress for another hour. Then I told him what a hard time I'd
-had trying to think up something interesting to write in my diary. He
-said, looking again toward Cousin Eunice's window, that there was only
-_one_ thing in the world to write about! But he supposed I was too
-young to know anything about that. I spoke up promptly and told him a
-girl never _got_ too young to know about love.
-
-"Love!" he said, trying to look surprised. "Who mentioned love?"
-
-Just then I heard the flutteration of a silk petticoat on the porch
-behind the vines, but Rufe was gazing so hard at the blue hills on the
-far side of town that he didn't hear it. So, without saying anything
-to him, I leaned over far enough to look under the banisters, and saw
-the bottom of Bertha's skirt and a skein of blue silk thread lying on
-the floor. So I knew she was sitting there working on that everlasting
-chafing-dish apron. Then Satan put an idea into my head. I think it
-was Satan.
-
-"Rufe," I said, talking very loud and quick, so Bertha would just
-_have_ to hear me, "what's the difference between a kitten and a cat?"
-
-Rufe at last got his eyes unfixed from the blue hills and just stared
-at me foolishly for a second.
-
-"Am I the parent of a child that I should have to answer fool
-questions?" he said.
-
-"But the night she came you called Bertha a _kitten_!" I reminded him,
-and he looked worse surprised. "And since I've heard her called a
-_cat_! How long does it take a kitten to grow into a cat?"
-
-"Oh, I see! Well, I'm better versed in feline ways now than I was that
-night; so I might state that sometimes you discover that a kitten is a
-cat! There isn't any difference!"
-
-We heard a clattering noise behind the vines just then, which I knew
-was Bertha dropping her embroidery scissors. Rufe jumped, for he had
-no idea anybody was hearing our conversation; and I know he wouldn't
-have said what he did about cats except he _thought_ I was too little
-to understand such figures of speech. Then he got up to go in and see
-who it was. And I decided to disappear around the corner of the house.
-I didn't altogether disappear before I heard her say indeed he _had_
-meant to call her a cat; and he said indeed he hadn't, but she hadn't
-been "square" with him, and they talked and talked until I got uneasy
-that Cousin Eunice would be coming through the hall and hear them. So
-I hurried on back to head her off. But Satan, or whoever it was, put
-me up to a good job in that, for the next time I saw Rufe he was
-wearing his fraternity pin and a happy smile. And Bertha had red spots
-on her face, even as late as dinner-time, like consumption that lovely
-heroines die of.
-
-
-I've been too disappointed lately to write in my diary. Somehow, I
-think like Rufe, that there's only one thing worth writing about, and
-there's been very little in that line going on around here lately.
-Poor Rufe is having a harder time now than he had when Bertha was on
-his hands, for Cousin Eunice has taken it into her head to show him
-that she doesn't have to accept him the minute he gets untangled from
-a summer flirtation. Those were her very words.
-
-She and I go for long walks with him every morning, down through the
-ravine; and they read poetry that sounds so good you feel like
-somebody's scratching your back. And she wears her best-fitting
-shirtwaists. One good thing about Cousin Eunice is that her clothes
-never look like she'd sat up late the night before to make them. And
-when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been
-greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears
-the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his
-rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's
-punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very
-foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy
-Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's
-been married a heap more times than mother ever has.
-
-"The longer you keep a man feelin' like he's on a red-hot stove the
-better he loves you," Mammy Lou told Cousin Eunice to-night, as she
-was powdering her face for the last time before going down-stairs and
-trying to keep us from seeing that she was listening for a footstep on
-the gravel walk. "An' a husban's got to be treated jus' like a lover!
-A good, heavy poker's a fine thing to make a husban' know 'is
-place--an' Lawk! a lazy husban's like a greasy churn--you have to give
-him a thorough scaldin' to do any good!"
-
-
-This morning at the breakfast table, after father had helped the
-plates to chicken, saving two gizzards for me, he said: "Times have
-changed since I was a young man!"
-
-As this wasn't exactly the first time we had heard such a remark none
-of us paid any attention to it until we saw mother trying to make him
-hush. Then we knew he must be starting to say something funny about
-Cousin Eunice and Rufe, for mother always stops him on this subject
-whenever she can, because she doesn't want Bertha's feelings hurt. But
-Bertha never seems to mind. She's decided to marry the commercial
-traveler, I'm almost sure, although her people say he's not "steady."
-Steady means staying still, so who ever heard of a traveling man who
-was steady?
-
-"Times have changed, especially about courting," father kept on,
-pretending that he didn't see mother shaking her head at him. When
-father gets that twinkle in his eye he can't see anything else. "Now
-in _my_ young days when a girl and a fellow looked good to each other
-they usually got engaged at once. But _now_--jumping Jerusalem! No
-matter how deeply in love they are they waste days and days trying to
-get a 'complete understanding' of each other's nature. They talk about
-their opinion of everything under the sun, from woman's suffrage to
-Belshazzar's feast."
-
-"Lord Byron wrote a piece in the Fifth Reader about Belshazzar's
-feast," I started to remark, but I remembered in time to hush, for
-I've never been able to mention Lord Byron's name to my family in any
-peace since they found that I keep a vase of flowers in front of his
-picture all the time. They call him my _beau_--the beautiful creature!
-
-Father didn't notice my remark, however. He was too busy with his
-own. "And instead of exchanging locks of hair, as they used to when
-Mary and I were young, they give each other limp-backed books that
-have 'helped to shape their career,' and beg that they will mark the
-passages that impress _them_!"
-
-"Uncle Dan, you've been eavesdropping!" Cousin Eunice said, looking up
-from her hot biscuit and honey long enough to smile at him, but she
-didn't quit eating. It has got out of style to stop eating when you're
-in love, for a man admires a healthy-looking girl. I know a young man
-who had been going to see a girl for a long time and never did
-propose. She was a pretty girl, too, slender and wild-rosy-looking.
-Well, she took a trip to Germany one summer and drank so much of
-_something_ fattening over there that the wild-rose look changed to
-American beauty; and when she came home in the fall the young man was
-so delighted with her looks that he turned in and married her before
-Christmas!
-
-Cousin Eunice knows these people too, and she does all she can to keep
-her digestion good, even to fresh milk and raw eggs. I hope _I_ can
-get married without the raw eggs part of it. And she tramps all over
-the woods for the sake of her appetite in stylish-looking tan boots.
-
-As we left the dining-room I noticed that she had on her walking-boots
-and a short skirt, so I thought Rufe would be along pretty soon for us
-to go down to the ravine and read poetry. They always take me along
-because I soon get enough of the poetry and go off to wade in the
-branch, leaving them on their favorite big gray rock.
-
-Sure enough, Rufe wasn't long about coming, and I saw that his
-limp-backed book was labeled "Keats" this morning. Cousin Eunice
-didn't have a book. She carried a parasol. A parasol is used to jab
-holes in the sand when you're being made love to.
-
-I don't know why I should have felt so, but just as soon as they got
-started to reading this morning I had a curious feeling, like you
-have when the lights burn low on the stage and the orchestra begins
-_The Flower Song_. The way they looked at each other made under my
-scalp tingle. Now, if I ever have a granddaughter that doesn't have
-this feeling in the presence of _great_ things I shall disinherit her
-and leave my diamonds to a society for tuberculosis or pure food or
-fresh air, or some of those charitable things.
-
-  [Illustration: Jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol _Page 26_]
-
-Before long they branched off from Keats to Shelley, and Rufe didn't
-need a book with him. Just after he had finished a little verse
-beginning, "I can not give what men call love," I had sense enough to
-get up and go away from them. Although I have always been crazy to see
-a proposal, there was something in the atmosphere around that old gray
-rock that made me feel as if I were treading on sacred ground. (I hate
-to use expressions like this, that everybody else uses, but I can't
-think of anything else and it's getting too late to sit here by myself
-and try.) Anyhow it's the feeling you have when you go into a
-cathedral with stained glass windows. So I went away from them, but
-not very far away, just a little distance, to where I have a lovely
-pile of moss collected on the north side of a big tree. And the
-smotheration around my heart kept up.
-
-It seemed to me the _longest_ time before anything happened, for
-Cousin Eunice was jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol like she
-was being paid to do it by the hour. Finally, without any ado, he put
-his hands on hers and made her stop.
-
-"Sweetheart," I heard him say, so low that I could hardly hear, for
-_The Flower Song_ was buzzing through my head so loud. Then he seemed
-to remember me for he looked around, and, seeing that I was _clear_
-gone, he said it again, "Sweetheart." She looked up at him when he
-said it, and looked and _looked_! Maybe she never had realized before
-just how big and broad-shouldered and brown-eyed Rufe really is!
-Neither one of them said anything, but he put both arms around her;
-and when I saw that they were going to kiss I shut my eyes right tight
-and stopped up my ears and buried my face in the pile of moss. Even
-then I never felt so much like a yellow dog in my life!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-
-You hear a heap of talking these days about "the divine mission of
-woman," especially from long-haired preachers that don't believe in
-ladies voting; and another heap of talk about the "rights" of women
-from the ladies themselves.
-
-There was so much of it going on last winter when I was at Rufe's that
-I told some of it to Mammy Lou when I came home. She says it's every
-speck a question of dish-washing when you sift it down to the bottom.
-The women are tired of their job and the men are too proud to do it
-unless the window shades are pulled down.
-
-I don't blame the men for being proud. They have something to be proud
-of, for they can do exactly as they please, from wearing out the
-seats of their trousers when they're little to being president when
-they're big. When I was right little I used to think that the heathen
-over the sea that threw the girl babies to the crocodiles were doing
-it in hopes of killing out the girl breed, so the little new babies
-would have to be boys. A heathen is anybody that lives on the other
-side of the map from us.
-
-Another good thing about a man is he can say, "Damn that telephone!"
-Rufe says it whenever he's busy and it bothers him, but Cousin Eunice
-can't. All she can do is to have sick headache when she gets worn out.
-
-I know one tired lady whose husband is a busy doctor and whose baby is
-a busy baby, and lots of times the lady has to stop up her ears to say
-her prayers. And she hardly ever has time to powder her face unless
-company is coming, but, sick or well, she has to answer that
-telephone! She says it is a disheartening thing to have to take her
-hands out of the biscuit dough when the cook's brother has died and go
-to the telephone in a big hurry where folks tell her every symptom of
-everything they have, from abscess on the brain to ingrowing
-toe-nails. And she never gets the baby well lathered in his bath of a
-morning but what some of her lady friends call her up and she has to
-sit and talk for politeness' sake till the baby almost drowns and gets
-soap in his eyes.
-
-She tries to believe in New Thought though, and some days she "goes
-into the silence." This means wrapping the telephone up in a
-counterpane and stuffing up the door-bell until it can make only a
-hoarse, choking noise. Then she spanks the baby and puts him to bed,
-and that house is like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.
-
-Yes, women certainly seem to have a hard time in this life. Even when
-they marry rich and live in a hotel and never have any babies they
-seem to be worse tired than the ones that warm bottles of milk and
-peel potatoes. Some of them that Cousin Eunice knows are called
-"bridge maniacs," and they shrug their shoulders and say "What's the
-use?" if you suggest anything to them.
-
-
-I have been home from Cousin Eunice's now for two weeks, for the
-stylish, private school I went to up there lets out soon. Mammy Lou
-says I'm the worst person to break out in spots she ever saw, and one
-of my "spots" last summer was keeping this diary, which I did for a
-while very hard and fast. Now a whole year has passed and it is summer
-again and I am so lonesome that I believe I'll write a little every
-day and tell some of the things we did at Rufe's last winter. If any
-of you grandchildren who read are afflicted with that trouble of doing
-things by fits and starts you may know who you inherited it from. I'm
-not really to blame so much for neglecting you, my diary, for all the
-time I needed you most last winter you were lost. This is a terrible
-habit that all my things have--getting lost. My garters do it
-especially and I have to tear great holes in my stockings by pinning
-them up and then forgetting to stand stiff-kneed.
-
-Rufe told mother last fall that I was so precocious, which I looked up
-in the dictionary and admired him very much for, that I ought to be
-where I could have good teachers. So after he and Cousin Eunice had
-been married long enough to be able to bear the sight of a third party
-at the breakfast table they wrote for me to come and I went.
-
-I was kinder disappointed to see them looking like every-day folks
-again, for the last time I had seen them they were looking as they had
-never looked before and never will look again, for Rufe says he'll be
-hanged if anybody can get him to appear in that wedding suit any more.
-
-But oh, that wedding! And oh, that wedding march played on a
-thundering pipe-organ that makes cold chills run up and down your back
-thinking what if it was happening to you! When the time comes for "I
-will" you nearly smother, you're so afraid they might change their
-minds at the last minute and embarrass you half to death right there
-before all those people.
-
-They didn't change their minds then, though, nor since then either, I
-honestly believe. They married safe and sound, and Cousin Eunice's
-favorite book now is _1,001 Tried Recipes_. And Keats is lots of times
-covered with dust.
-
-I got this far last night when Mammy Lou passed by my window on her
-way to her house from the kitchen and stopped long enough to make me
-go to bed. She says it takes a sight of sleep and a "passel o'
-victuals" for a girl of my age, and I don't have enough of either.
-
-"I'se shore goin' 'er tell Mis' Mary how you set up uv a night," she
-said, very fiercely, but she couldn't shake her finger at me for it
-took both hands to hold the big pan she had under her apron. "An' as
-fer eatin'! Why, a red bug eats more! An' such truck! Candy and apples
-and fried chicken and fried Saratoga chips! _Fries_ nuvver was no good
-for nobody at the gawky age, nohow. It takes _boils_ to fatten them!"
-
-I promised I'd go on to bed and eat nothing but "boils" to please her
-if she wouldn't tell father and mother how late I sit up, so she
-promised. She never would tell anyhow.
-
-I believe the next thing I wanted to mention about was the theaters
-they used to take me to on Friday night when there wasn't any lessons.
-I just love the theater. I believe if I don't decide to be a trained
-nurse, although I am sure that is what I was cut out for, I may be an
-actress. When they used to tell me pitiful tales at Sunday-school
-about the heathen I was sure I wanted to be a missionary to Japan.
-Mother used to take me to a tea store with her every time we went into
-the city to buy things we couldn't get at home and the walls were
-covered with pictures of Japan. I never will forget how blue the sky
-was nor how white the clouds, and it seemed the loveliest country in
-the world to me, except home. And I would look at mother and wonder
-how she would feel if I told her that some day I was going to leave
-her and father and sail away to that beautiful land where the poor,
-ignorant people didn't know how to wear corsets nor eat hog meat. Of
-course they needed somebody to tell them what they were missing and I
-was eager to be that one!
-
-That was a long time ago! I know more about Japan now! I know more
-about America too! Doctor Gordon said one night last winter that if
-some of the missionaries were to go all over this country and tell
-folks to open their windows and stop murdering their babies with candy
-and bananas they would do more good than trying to teach the Japanese
-so much. He said he didn't know which was the more heathenish, to
-throw children in the river and let them have a quick death or stuff
-them on fried meat and pickles and let them die by slow torture.
-
-The mothers are hard to teach, he says, because they don't more than
-leave the doctor's office with a poor little pale baby than they meet
-an old woman who tells them not to let the child be doctored to death,
-to "feed 'im." They will tell the mother "Didn't _I_ have eleven? And
-everything _I_ et, _they_ et!"
-
-He told us so many stories of murdered babies that I got to feeling
-like I'd prefer being a nurse in a day home. I love babies! And Doctor
-Gordon has the loveliest eyes!--But I haven't got to him yet.
-
-Speaking of the theater, I got to see many notorious people on the
-stage this winter. Rufe said I would get a great variety of ideas from
-the best plays. I did. I got a great variety of Ideals too. One time
-he would be tall, fair and brave, with a Scotch name, like Marmaduke
-Cameron, or Bruce MacPherson. Then the very next time I'd go he'd
-change his looks and disposition.
-
-I loved some of the operas, too, especially _Il Trovatore_. I wish the
-singers were slender, though. It hurts your feelings to have the
-"voice that rang from that donjon tower" belonging to a great fat man
-with no head to speak of, and what he has consisting mainly of jaws.
-Of all the songs on record (not phonographic record) next to _Dixie_
-and _La Paloma_ I believe I love _Ah, I have sighed to rest me!_ The
-words to this are not so loving, but the tune is so pitiful.
-
-I wish my name was Dolores Lovelock, or Anita Messala, and I could get
-shut up in a tower. I have a girl friend in the city and every time we
-write to each other we sign the name we're wishing most was ours at
-that very minute. Her last letter was signed "Undine Valentine," but I
-don't think that's half as pretty as Mercedes Ficediola.
-
-It wouldn't hardly be worth while for me to change my name now,
-because I change my mind so often. I'm a great hand to start a thing
-and then branch off and start something entirely different, such as
-learning how to make the table walk, and pyrography. Cousin Eunice
-said one day when she looked around at the things I had in my room
-that it reminded her of Pompeii when they dug it up--so many things
-started that never would be finished.
-
-One of the things we enjoyed most at Cousin Eunice's was walking out
-to a lovely old cemetery not very far from her house. It is so old and
-so beautiful that you're sure all the people in the graves must have
-gone to Heaven long ago. Along in April, when the iris and
-lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom and the birds and trees and sky all
-seem to be so happy, you look around at those peaceful graves and you
-don't believe in hell one bit. You think God is a heap better than
-folks give Him credit for being. But I hope this will never come to
-Brother Sheffield's ears, for he thinks you're certainly going there
-if you don't believe in a hell worse than the Standard Oil Company on
-fire.
-
-While I'm on this kind of subject I want to tell something that Rufe
-said last winter, but I'm afraid to, for if mother ever saw it she
-would get Brother Sheffield to hold a special meeting for Rufe. I
-might risk it and then lock my diary up tight. Rufe said one time when
-I remarked that I liked St. John better than St. Paul: "No wonder! St.
-John's _liver_ was in good working order!"
-
-Cousin Eunice and Rufe are still very earnest and study deep things,
-even if they don't read Keats so much. They know a jolly crowd of
-people that call themselves "Bohemians." Lots of nights some of them
-would come to Cousin Eunice's and we would cook things in the
-chafing-dish and "discuss the deeper problems of life." They are not
-real Bohemians though, for, from what they said, I learned that a real
-Bohemian is a person that is very clever, but nobody knows it. He
-"follows his career," eating out of paper sacks and tin cans and
-sleeping on an article that is an oriental couch in the daytime. Then
-finally some rich person finds him and invites him to dinner, and this
-is called "discovering a genius."
-
-When our friends would come we would talk about the "Brotherhood of
-Man" and the North Pole and such things as that. I listen to
-everything I can hear about the North Pole for I never have got over
-the idea that Santa Claus lives there. And the "Brotherhood of Man"
-means we're all as much alike as biscuits in a pan, the only
-difference being in the place where we're put; and we ought to act
-accordingly.
-
-Some of the young ones talk a great deal about how the children of the
-nation ought to be brought up, and they tell about what their family
-life is going to be like, though Rufe says most of them haven't got
-salary enough to support a cockroach.
-
-I think the "Brotherhood of Man" business is a good thing to teach
-children, for I wasn't taught it and I shall never forget my feelings
-when I first learned that Christ was a Jew! I thought it couldn't be
-so, and if it was so I could never be happy again. So the Bohemians
-are going to teach their children that the Jew is our brother and that
-he hath eyes and if you prick him he will bleed. These are their own
-words. I'm sure the Jews are lovely people since I've seen Ben-Hur on
-the stage and the picture of Dis-Disraeli. That's all I know about him
-and I'm not sure how to spell that. I'll skin my children if I ever
-catch them saying "Sheenie" in my presence.
-
-And we make limericks! We don't make them in the chafing-dish though,
-as I thought when I first went there. A limerick is a very different
-thing from what you'd think if you didn't know. It's a verse of poetry
-that's very clever in every line.
-
-Among the Bohemians I liked best were a married couple and Ann
-Lisbeth. Besides having the same name as mine, Ann Lisbeth is a
-beautiful foreign girl who was living across the ocean when she was
-born. Her last name is something that _Disraeli_ is not a circumstance
-to, and I'd never spell it, so I won't waste time trying. She's going
-to get rid of that name pretty soon and I don't blame her, although
-Cousin Eunice says it is a noble one across the ocean. _Still_ I
-don't blame her, for the man is a young doctor, Doctor Gordon that
-I've already mentioned, and perfectly _precious_. Next to a prince I
-believe a young doctor is the most thrilling thing in the world!
-
-Ann Lisbeth lived near Cousin Eunice and they were great friends. She
-and her mother were very poor because they got exiled from their home
-for trying to get Ann Lisbeth's father out of prison where the king
-had put him. Oh, the people across the ocean are so much more romantic
-than we are in this country! Now, father wouldn't ever get put in
-prison in a lifetime!
-
-Ann Lisbeth has to work for a living. She does embroidery--exquisite
-embroidery, and lace work that looks like charlotte russe. She is the
-kind of looking girl that you'd expect to have a dressing-table
-covered with silver things and eat marshmallows and ice-cream all the
-time. She is what Cousin Eunice calls a "lotus-eater." This like to
-have worried me to death at first, for I misunderstood it and imagined
-it was something like eating roaches. I wasn't going to blame Ann
-Lisbeth for it even if it _was_ like roaches, for I thought maybe it
-was the style in her country across the ocean. What is _one_ nation's
-style would turn another's stomach; and everybody likes what he was
-raised on, even Chinese rats and Limburger cheese.
-
-It was very romantic the way Ann Lisbeth met Doctor Gordon. She had
-gone down to the florist's one slippery day to spend her last quarter
-for white hyacinths to cheer her mother up when she had the good
-fortune to slip down and break her arm. Doctor Gordon happened to be
-passing at the time in his automobile and he carried her to the
-hospital and fixed the arm. He said white hyacinths were his favorite
-flower, too, so he sends them to her and her mother every day.
-
-Poor Doctor Gordon! He's having a hard time to make a living like
-every other young doctor. He says sometimes he has a whole month of
-blue Mondays come right together. And he says every time he happens to
-wake up with a headache he also has a blowout in his best tire and
-gets a notice from the bank that he's overdrawn the same day.
-
-I liked him extremely well myself for a while, and he seemed to like
-me. He called me his little sweetheart, but I soon saw that a little
-sweetheart has to take a big back seat when there's a grown one
-around.
-
-Mother and I have been laughing all day about a little affair that
-happened here last winter while I was away at school.
-
-After Christmas mother and father went back to stay at Rufe's with me
-a few days, for they said the place was so lonesome when I left they
-couldn't stand it. Of course they met Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth,
-for we were always at each other's house, either to learn a Mount
-Mellick stitch or to play a piece from a new opera. Mother liked Ann
-Lisbeth's sweet ways so much that she said she just must come down
-and make her a visit before she _thought_ of getting married.
-
-About the time for the first jonquils to bloom, early in February,
-mother wrote that they reminded her so much of me and made her so
-lonesome, that she wished Ann Lisbeth would come on then. So she
-packed her suit-case and went.
-
-Everybody knows how the people in a little place will look at a
-stranger that comes in, because they're so tired of looking at each
-other. So they stared at her from the station clear up to the house.
-Now, city people never get any enjoyment out of staring unless they
-see somebody in trouble, such as an unfortunate young man with his
-shoulder to the wheel, trying to repair a puncture, by the side of a
-muddy road. Then they stare, and giggle too.
-
-There were several young men at the station that day, and, as Ann
-Lisbeth went down there not breathing to a soul that she was engaged,
-they came near losing their minds over her beautiful skin and foreign
-accent.
-
-The one of them that seemed to be most impressed was a bore--no, he
-wasn't just an every-day kind of bore that asks you if this is your
-first visit to that place and tells you afterward that he never has
-been so impressed in his life on short acquaintance. I've heard Cousin
-Eunice talk about them, but this man wasn't like that sort of bore. He
-was a perfect _auger_. Many a time when he has dropped in to see
-father of an evening and I would have to put my book down for
-politeness' sake, I've sat there and pinched my face, the side that
-was turned away from him, till it was black and blue, to keep awake.
-Pinching your arm or leg wouldn't have done any good with this
-man--you had to pinch up close to your brain.
-
-All the time Ann Lisbeth was there he showed so plainly that he was
-coming to see _her_ that mother and father would go out and leave them
-alone, though father said he felt so sorry for her that he promised
-always to do something to run him off by ten o'clock. Every man knows
-how to do these things, I believe, such as taking off his shoes loud
-and telling mother to wind the clock, in a stagey voice, and making a
-great racket around the front door. And when the young man would hear
-these signs he would leave.
-
-Right in the midst of Ann Lisbeth's visit one day she got a telegram
-from Doctor Gordon saying that he was coming down that evening and
-leave on the midnight train. This is a sure sign a man cares. He
-couldn't stand it any longer. Well this Mr. W. (I'll call him that for
-fear his grandchildren might feel hard toward mine if it ever got to
-their ears that I had spelt his name right out) had said he was coming
-over that night to bring some new records for the talking machine, to
-try them; but, when Ann Lisbeth told mother about Doctor Gordon
-coming, mother telephoned him, Mr. W., I mean, not to come till the
-next night when father would be at home, as he wanted to hear the
-records.
-
-Sure enough father did have some business out in the country that
-afternoon and didn't get home until about ten o'clock that night. He
-heard voices as he passed the parlor door, and thinking of course it
-was Mr. W., decided that he would run him off right away so poor Ann
-Lisbeth could get some sleep.
-
-Mother was already asleep and there was no way for him to know who it
-really was in the parlor, so he took his shoes off and slammed them
-down in vain, and rattled out the ashes, and wound the clock, and
-coughed and sneezed. By this time he was awfully sleepy, for it was a
-cold night and he had had a long drive, so he went to bed and to
-sleep.
-
-Along about twelve o'clock father woke up, and seeing a light still in
-the parlor, tried to get mother roused up long enough to ask her what
-else she supposed he might use besides _dynamite_ to run that fellow
-off. Mother was still so sleepy that she didn't say anything, so
-father got out of bed and opened his bedroom door. There were voices
-talking very easy in the parlor, so father, thinking that surely Ann
-Lisbeth would be ready to commit suicide by this time, decided he
-would walk to the front door and open and shut it real loud, knowing
-_that_ would run him off, without waiting to slip on his trousers.
-
-Now, father is long and lank, and wears old-timey bob-tail
-night-shirts, winter and summer; and all the rooms of our house open
-_square_ into that one big hall--and there are no curtains to hide
-behind!
-
-Just as father reached the front door and began tampering with the
-lock, out walked the happy pair from the parlor and they must have had
-a mighty tumble off of Mount Olympus or Pegasus, or whatever that
-place is called. They jumped back as quickly as they could, but of
-course they couldn't get back quickly enough to suit all parties
-concerned.
-
-Father finally got the door open and, to keep from having to pass the
-parlor door again, he ran _clear_ around that big, rambling house,
-bare-footed, and with the February moon shining down on him and the
-February wind whistling through his little bob-tail night-shirt.
-
-The noise of so many doors opening and shutting made mother wake up in
-a hurry, and, being used to father's ways of leaping, then looking
-afterward, she realized what had happened.
-
-Poor father came around to the side porch and scratched on the bedroom
-door for mother to let him in. By this time she was so near dead from
-laughing that she could hardly speak, but managed to use her voice a
-little, just to pay him back for doing such an idiotic thing, she
-said.
-
-She opened the bedroom door a little, so Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth
-could hear, then called out in a loud, distressed voice:
-
-"Oh, Dan! _Have_ you come home in _that condition_ again?"
-
-Everybody that knows father knows that he never drank a drop of
-anything stronger than soothing-syrup in his life; and when he had met
-Doctor Gordon in the city they hadn't been able to get off the subject
-of prohibition, they both were so temperate. It was a terrible thing
-to be called "in that condition" before _him_!
-
-But mother let him in, and Doctor Gordon caught his train back to the
-city where he sent father at least _two_ dozen funny post-cards on the
-subject of "that condition."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-
-I always did admire surprises, my diary, so when mother came in from
-the station one day not long ago and said there was a surprise for me
-I thought sure it must be a dessert for dinner, or a package come by
-express, as it isn't Christmas for anything to be in the toe of my
-stocking. But mother shook her head and smiled at all of these. She
-said it was a heap better, and it is.
-
-A curious thing has happened in this family. It's happened a little to
-father, for he's kept awake by it; a good deal to mother, for she has
-to tell how to tend to it; an awful lot to Dilsey, for she has to walk
-it and feed it and get it to sleep; but it has happened most of all to
-Bertha, for it's to _her_ that the stork (or the doctor, or out of
-the rose bush--they tell you so many different tales you never know
-which to believe) brought it. Just about that time Bertha happened not
-to be feeling very well, so mother wrote for her to come down to our
-house where the air would be good for her, and then she would have
-Dilsey to tend to it. You'd never guess what it is, my diary, so I'll
-tell you. It's a baby! A live one with open and shut eyes, and can
-cry; you don't have to pull a string to make it, either. This makes it
-better than even the finest doll, and, as I'm above dolls anyhow, a
-baby is more suitable to one of my age. The only bad part about it is
-that you can't lock it up in the wardrobe when you get through playing
-with it. Sometimes I have wished it was the kind you had to pull a
-string to make cry, and then I'd cut the string off so we would have a
-few peaceful nights, but apt as not this wouldn't be healthy for it,
-for I guess the stork (or the doctor, or out of the rose bush) knew
-best how to fix it.
-
-Mr. Parkes is the baby's father, and also Bertha's husband. He is one
-of the nicest men you ever saw, pleasant all the time, which people
-say is because he's a drummer which sells things. He carries valises
-full of lovely crackers and little cakes with icing on the top, and
-calls it his "line." I've heard Rufe and Cousin Eunice talk about
-"lines falling in pleasant places," and I think it must mean something
-like this, for our house has been a pleasant place since Saturday
-night when he came to spend Sunday with us and Bertha. Some days he
-sells as much as five hundred dollars worth of cake to _one_ man,
-though I don't see what keeps him from _dying_ that bought them of
-stomach ache, for I've had it myself since he's been here
-considerable. He and father talk a heap about Mr. Parkes' "house" in
-the city. He writes to the house every day and it writes back to him,
-and he is always saying what he'll do "when he hears from the house,"
-just like it was folks.
-
-He wears an elk's head on the lapel of his coat for an ornament and
-another on his watch chain, and even has a pair of purple socks with
-white elks on them, and laughs a good deal, which has been a benefit
-to Bertha's disposition since she married him. If the baby wakes up
-and cries for her bottle as late as _eleven_ o'clock at night, which
-would give most men room to say things, he's just as jolly as if it
-was broad daylight, and says so loud you can hear him in the next
-room: "Tonsound her little skin! Her is her daddy's own kid--_her_
-knows that eleven o'clock calls for a bottle, only daddy wants _his_
-cold, and her wants _hers_ warmed!" And out to the kitchen he goes and
-warms it like a gentleman. I believe Mr. Parkes would be a gentleman
-even if he had _twins_.
-
-Of course there never is any good happens to your family without
-something bad happening along with it. A misfortune was sent to us one
-morning when the train came. It was Aunt Laura, mother's sister, and
-Bertha's and my aunt. It is a habit of hers to come to our house
-every summer, but this time she came before we were looking for her,
-having got mad at the relatives where she was. So she has changed her
-will and is going to leave all her money to Bertha's baby, and she
-told mother that she came right on down as soon as she decided on this
-to see if the baby was a nice, well-behaved child, as it didn't run in
-the family for the children to be any too well-behaved; and she looked
-at me when she said the last. Bertha was in a flutter when she heard
-it, but mother just laughed and said the baby was equally as
-well-behaved as most eight-weeks-old children.
-
-Aunt Laura has spit-curls, but a great deal of money, having been a
-school teacher ever since she was born, and never spending her money
-buying her little nieces candy and pretty dresses. She admires church
-and preachers more than anything, but I don't, and when the money was
-willed to _me_ one time I lost my chance by saying at the table when
-Brother Sheffield was there eating chicken and said he liked the
-gizzard, right quick, before I thought of manners, "Father, don't
-give it to him--_he_ ain't little!" The money has been willed to every
-member of the family, for she gets mad at one and unwills it away from
-them onto another, until we've all had a trial.
-
-But the poetry books say it's a black cloud that don't blow somebody a
-silver lining, and I guess the silver lining to Aunt Laura is that
-she's in love with Brother Sheffield, which will give me a good many
-new thoughts to write about; for before when I was writing about
-couples it was always the man that was trying to marry the lady, but
-now it's the other way, which you can always count on when you see
-spit-curls. Even this is better to write about than just a baby,
-though, for they mostly do the same thing day after day; but you can
-never tell what a _loving_ person will do to thrill your diary.
-
-It was till plumb breakfast time this morning before Aunt Laura made
-known to us what new thing she's got up to talk about all the time.
-Father calls it a "fad." He said the minute he saw her come he was
-willing to bet on anything, from the latest breakfast food to an Aunty
-Saloon League, but mother told him it was sinful to bet about such
-things, for last summer it was foreign missions. It is just as well
-that he didn't bet, for he would have lost, it being the heart disease
-which she has very bad. She said she didn't tell us right at first
-because she knew we didn't care anything about hearing it, but she
-thought we better be prepared in case a spell came on her suddenly,
-for she had felt worse symptoms lately than ever before. Bertha had
-acted awful good all day and not let the baby cry nor slobber on Aunt
-Laura for the sake of the will.
-
-I guess I've been worse this last week than ever before, for it is the
-first time I've been ashamed to tell what I've done in my diary.
-Bertha knows if Aunt Laura could get Brother Sheffield to marry her
-she would unwill the money from the baby; so she thinks up things to
-tell me to do to keep them from being together, and I've been doing
-them. One time I hid her purple Sunday bonnet, then her curls to keep
-her from going to prayer-meeting, but I'm glad to say that I have
-never taken the dimes which Bertha said she would give me for doing
-them. I hate Aunt Laura enough to do mean things to her myself, which
-is a better principle than to do them just for dimes.
-
-
-This is Sunday again and I have to go to church. Somehow, during the
-summer, Sunday smells like black silk, for mother and all the ladies
-that can afford it wear it to church to let the others see how well
-off they are. When I was _right_ little and got tee-ninsy cards at
-Sunday-school I imagined Heaven looked like those cards, all
-lilies-of-the-valley and little pink lambs, but since I've grown older
-my views have changed. Preachers always think you can't go to Heaven
-unless you do just like they do, and I couldn't be like a preacher to
-save my life, except about chicken.
-
-Aunt Laura had to look all over the place for her black silk waist
-this morning and then not find it, so she got into a bad spell and
-couldn't go to church. After the sermon was over and we were trying to
-forget it by standing around and telling the other ladies how much
-fruit we had put up this past week, Brother Sheffield came up and
-asked mother if Aunt Laura was sick, not being out to services. Mother
-said she was, but she hoped to find her all right when we got home, as
-she never was sick very long, and I knew she would be well because it
-was ice-cream for dinner. He said then he'd be over to see her this
-afternoon as he hadn't seen her in so long.
-
-Well, it was awfully hot all the afternoon, and, as he wouldn't be
-over till late so as to be invited to supper, Aunt Laura decided to
-take off her front hair and have a nap after dinner. Now, up to this
-time I have been afraid to mention even in my diary about Bertha's
-bad habit. I really like Bertha better than I did before she was
-married, and I knew if Aunt Laura was to catch on to it she would
-change from the baby right away, for Brother Sheffield calls it "the
-trade-mark of Jezebel," which is a Bible lady, though the preachers
-always throw her up to anybody they don't like. So Bertha keeps this
-locked away good in the little left-handed drawer of her bureau, and
-don't anybody but me know it's there.
-
-It was getting late when brother Sheffield drove up to the gate. He is
-an old man and his knees are so poor that they look like they would
-punch through his trousers legs if he was to get down on them to ask a
-lady to marry him, as they do in books. In fact, I have stayed around
-the parlor and watched considerable, thinking how mortified I'd feel
-if they were to punch through, but he hasn't ever got down on them
-yet. His name is Gideon, which makes it worse for him, too. Cousin
-Eunice said Ann Lisbeth's name is a very old one in the country
-across the ocean where she used to live, but I know there ain't an
-older name on earth than Gideon. Aunt Laura ought to have been named
-the feminine of it, instead of that beautiful name that has so much
-lovely poetry written about it.
-
-Anyhow, I was surprised that she wasn't dressed up in a clean waist
-and down on the front porch to meet him, but I went up-stairs right
-quick to tell her he was there. She was still asleep and woke up as
-mad and red as folks always do that go to sleep in the summer. I told
-her he was already on the porch.
-
-"Well, help me get dressed, won't you, instead of standing there
-staring at me as if you never saw anybody with their front hair off
-and their upper plate out before? Run to the well and bring me some
-fresh water, and, say, come back by your mother's room and bring me
-her box of powder and puff. I spilt all of mine looking in the drawer
-this morning for that pestiferous waist. Hurry!"
-
-I ran to the well and got the water, but coming back by mother's room
-I saw that Brother Sheffield was facing the door and would have seen
-me, which wouldn't have been nice to bring out a box and puff before a
-man, much less a preacher, so I didn't get the powder. I told Aunt
-Laura to get Bertha's, when she commenced fussing, for I had passed
-her room and saw that she had dressed in a big hurry and left the
-bureau unlocked, the room being very hot and dark, the baby being
-asleep, on account of the flies. She hushed then and said for me to go
-down and tell him that she would be out in a few minutes, which I did.
-I left him on the porch fanning while I went out to a little place I
-have under the porch where it is nice and quiet and they can't find
-you reading fairy tales when they want you for something; but _you_
-can hear _them_ talking.
-
-Pretty soon Aunt Laura came out, and in her dressed-up voice commenced
-telling him how sorry she was that she kept him waiting. But before
-she had more than got it said he asked her excited-like what was the
-matter with her. It seemed like when he got excited she did too, so
-she grabbed her stomach (not that I saw her, but I know she always
-does it here lately when she gets mad or scared) and said:
-
-"Oh, my heart! It must be the heart disease!"
-
-He interrupted her again, a heap too quick and sharp for a preacher:
-
-"Your heart _nothing_! Go and look at your _face_!"
-
-That was more than I could stand, so out from under the porch I slid,
-just in time to see Aunt Laura, with her face as red as the Indians
-they have in sideshows, turn and run into the hall where she could
-look at herself in the hat-rack looking-glass. She gave one tremendous
-yell which woke the baby and made the rest of the family come flying
-in from where they were. It wasn't a minute before me and Brother
-Sheffield were in the hall with her and mother and father running in
-off of the back porch, and Dilsey with the baby in her arms leaning
-over the banisters to see what was the matter.
-
-"It's my death stroke," Aunt Laura said, just like she knew what she
-was talking about. "The doctor's books say it comes on this way," she
-kept on, while the preacher fanned her and we were all flying around
-doing things for her, and me standing still wondering how on earth
-come her face so fiery red. "Thank Heaven, I die in the conviction of
-having lived a good life, _and_ willed all my money to the only member
-of my family that has ever treated me with any respect." This did look
-kinder like the truth, for the baby was the only member of the family
-which was crying over this sad occasion; but she was very loud and
-hard.
-
-"I've been visited by Providence with a curious family," poor Aunt
-Laura said, looking very mad toward father and mother, "but they will
-soon have cause to regret all their strange ways with me. If there was
-_one_ person in this world that _did_ care for me, to _that_ one
-should my will be changed, for there is little consolation in leaving
-your property to a baby."
-
-Brother Sheffield here spoke up and said as Aunt Laura "so fully
-realized her hopeless condition he thought they better have some
-conversation together as to her spiritual welfare. He desired a few
-moments alone with her."
-
-"Yes," said Aunt Laura right quick, "_private_ conversation. My soul's
-safety is not to be discussed in the presence of my enemies!"
-
-So out we all got, me along with the rest of them, which was a great
-disappointment, for I could have learned a good deal if there had been
-any way of staying in there. They talked a long time and we could hear
-a few remarks now and then, being as we couldn't think of anything to
-say ourselves, and it was very still on the porch. Once or twice we
-heard her say very decided-like that indeed she _wasn't_ mistaken, for
-every book she had read on the subject said it was exactly that kind
-of a symptom. And then he would talk some, and one time he seemed to
-doubt her word so that she fairly yelled out, the way she does when
-he ain't around: "Can you doubt the hideous mark of death that has
-this hour appeared upon my face? Isn't it proof that my flesh is being
-prepared for the worms?" which _did_ sound pitiful and scary, too, it
-being kinder dark on the porch. This seemed to do the work, for in a
-few minutes she called us in and told us that Brother Sheffield had
-asked her to marry him, and although she had never before considered
-him in the light of a lover, still she was going to do it if the Lord
-let her live an hour, while father could ride over for a preacher and
-she could change her will. Brother Sheffield was crying like he does
-when he is calling mourners, and his voice would hardly talk, but he
-managed to say:
-
-"Yes, she has done me the honor to accept me; she, a woman of
-intellect and _wealth_, and me, only a poor, humble worker----" He
-couldn't get any further, but I had heard it so many times before that
-I knew it was "humble worker of the vineyard," though father says he
-is more of a _hungry_ eater of the _barnyard_.
-
-When Aunt Laura mentioned about being married in an hour Brother
-Sheffield seemed to take a second thought, and spoke up kinder weak
-and said he didn't know whether it was exactly right to be married on
-Sunday or not. When Aunt Laura saw him begin to weaken it brought on
-such a hard spell that she laid back on the sofa with her eyes shut,
-like she was sure enough dead. This really scared mother, and she told
-Mammy Lou, who had her head poked in at the back door, to run for some
-water. Mammy brought the bucket in off the back porch and commenced
-sousing it over Aunt Laura by the handsful, which didn't bring her to;
-but a strange thing happened, which, if it wasn't me that saw it,
-anybody would think it was a story, but I cross my heart that the
-water that dribbled down off her face on to her clean waist was
-_pink_!
-
-"Jumping Jerusalem!" father said, "the heart disease is washing off!"
-This made Aunt Laura open her eyes, and by that time Mammy Lou had got
-a towel and was wiping her face off all over, which seemed to make it
-look natural again. Not one of us knew what to think of such a strange
-disease till all of a sudden I remembered Bertha's bad habit! And then
-I knew it was all off with Aunt Laura and the marrying. It wasn't very
-long till they all caught on to what it was on her face; and the worst
-part of it was that Brother Sheffield said he believed she did it
-_a-purpose_. He rose up very proud, and looking kinder relieved and
-said he could never marry a woman who would "defile herself with the
-trade-mark of Jezebel."
-
-When he commenced throwing up Jezebel to Aunt Laura she threw up Esau
-to him, which sold himself for a "mess of pottage," though this never
-did sound lady-like to me, even coming from the pulpit. So Esau went
-out and drove straight home, and Jezebel went up-stairs and packed her
-trunk to go home early in the morning, never having been so insulted
-by relatives before in her life.
-
-So the marrying is off and the baby is disinherited, which will be a
-relief to it when it gets big enough to understand. But the worst part
-is that Aunt Laura blames the whole thing on me, for she says I had
-her ruination in mind when I sicked her on to that little left-handed
-drawer. Of course it ain't so, but it proves that people ought to
-raise the blind and be sure it's _whitening_ they're spreading on,
-even if the baby is asleep.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-
-You remember, my diary, a good many pages back I mentioned in here a
-pair of Bohemians that were married to each other and were friends of
-ours and would come to Rufe's every week and we would all do funny
-things? Well, I couldn't write about them then, for I didn't have any
-space for married people, wanting to save it purely for folks that
-loved each other. But now it does seem like Providence that they've
-come down here to spend the summer in the country, for there's not a
-single loving soul left to write about, Aunt Laura being gone and
-Brother Sheffield never very loving when she was here, except chicken.
-
-Their name is Mrs. Marie and Augustus Young. Father says that Adam or
-the legislature knew a thing or two when it named them _Young_. He is
-a professor and owns a chair in a college that must either have gold
-nails in it or sit extra good, for Rufe says it is worth five thousand
-dollars a year. Mrs. Young sings vocal. I wish she didn't, especially
-in a parlor. If anybody is singing or reciting a speech on a platform
-and flowers and electric lights it thrills you and you really enjoy
-it; but if they do it in a close room, especially if it trills high or
-has to kneel down and get red in the face, it makes you so ashamed for
-the one that's doing it, and for yourself, too, that you look straight
-at the carpet. Even then the blood rushes to your head.
-
-They have built a house with such a wide porch running all around it
-that it reminds you of a little, tiny boy with a great big hat pulled
-down over his eyes, which is called a bungalow. They said they had
-brought a "complete outfit for light housekeeping" along with them,
-but when mother saw it she laughed considerable on the outside of the
-bungalow, for it was fifty-three books, mostly ending in "ology," a
-hammock and some chairs that lean away back, a guitar apiece, a great
-many little glass cases that you stick bugs and butterflies in if you
-can catch them, a picture of the Apostle Hosea, with his head all
-wrapped up like an old lady with the neuralgia, which they both said
-they could not live without, and a punching-bag, which they punched a
-great deal in the city, not having any baby to amuse themselves with,
-which was a good thing for the baby I reckon. So mother sent them over
-a great many things and Professor Young said she was the most sensible
-woman he ever saw, including a biscuit board and a sifter. They have
-been here a few days now and are delighted with the country air and
-the green scenery, and, although it does seem proud to say it, _me_.
-They thought very highly of me at Cousin Eunice's and said I was the
-most "interesting revelation of artless juvenile expression" they ever
-saw, which I wrote down on paper and when I came home taught it to
-Mammy Lou to give in at the experience meeting.
-
-One morning early, while mammy was beating the biscuit for breakfast,
-and I was up in the pear tree right by the kitchen door I nearly fell
-out with surprise when I saw Professor Young coming around the house
-with a pretty shirt open at the neck that he admires and two _great
-big_ dominecker roosters up in his arms which were both squawking very
-loud. Mammy Lou came to the door to see what all the noise was about,
-and he said she was the very person he wanted to see.
-
-"Auntie," he commenced, trying to get into his pocket and wipe his
-face with his handkerchief, which was greatly perspiring, but he
-couldn't do it for the roosters, "my wife and I are in a quandary. We
-are both ignorant of the preferred method of inflicting a painless yet
-instantaneous death upon a fowl."
-
-Mammy's eyes began to shine, for she loves big words like she loves
-watermelons, and without a sign of manners she never even tried to
-answer his question, but looked up at me in the tree and says:
-
-"Baby, kin you rickollect all that to write it down?"
-
-Professor Young then looked up into the tree too and says: "Why,
-Mistress Ann, how entirely characteristic!" And then he wanted to know
-what book I was reading and I told him, _John Halifax, Gentleman_,
-which I have had for my favorite book since I was eleven years old;
-and the roosters continued to squawk. I got down then and asked
-Professor Young if he wouldn't come into the house, but he said no and
-asked his question to mammy over again. She looked at me and to save
-her manners I told her right quick what the meaning of it was, me
-understanding it on account of being precocious and also at Rufe's
-last winter, where they use strange words.
-
-"_Thar now!_ Is _that_ all it's about?" she asked awfully
-disappointed, for she thought from the words "painless death" it must
-be something about preaching. Then in a minute, when she saw that he
-was still waiting, she turned around to him and said: "Whar is the
-chicken _at_ that you want killed?"
-
-He held the roosters away from him and, looking at them as proud as a
-little boy looks at a bucket of minnows, he said:
-
-"These are they!"
-
-This tickled mammy so, and me too, though I remembered my manners,
-that she began to laugh, which shook considerable under her apron, and
-said:
-
-"Well, gentle_men_! Whut do you want to kill _them_ for?"
-
-"For breakfast," he said; and, noticing her laughing, his face got to
-looking so pitiful all in a minute that it made me just wish that
-Cinderella's fairy godmother would come along and turn those roosters
-into nice little pullets all fried and laying on parsley.
-
-"Why, Mr. Professor," mammy told him, "them roosters is so old that
-they will soon die a natural death if you leave them alone; and
-they're so big that you might fry 'em frum now till breakfast time on
-Jedgment Day, and then they wouldn't be fitten!"
-
-When she told him this he did manage to get out his handkerchief, I
-thought maybe to cry on, he looked so disappointed, but it was just to
-perspire on.
-
-"I--er, observed that they were unduly large," the poor man told her,
-"but I--er, thought maybe the larger a country thing was the better!"
-
-I thought of horse-flies and ticks, but was too mannerly to mention
-them, especially so near breakfast time. Just then mother and father
-came out of the back door, and when they heard the tale of the
-roosters they both invited him to come right in and have breakfast
-with us, and said they would tie their legs together so they could
-flop around the back yard, but couldn't get away, and I could run
-over and bring Mrs. Young.
-
-
-Last night when I got home I was too tired to write or anything else,
-for it was the night of the glorious Fourth! Professor Young and Mrs.
-Young both kept remarking all day how lovely it was to be able to
-spend the Fourth of July in a cool ravine instead of in the horrid
-city where there were so many smells of gunpowder and little boys.
-They said they must have me go along for the woods wouldn't really be
-woodsy without me, as I was the genius loci. I didn't know at first
-what that was, but I know now that it makes you tired and perspiry to
-be the genius loci of eight miles of woods on the Fourth of July. Rufe
-and Cousin Eunice couldn't think of half as many peculiar things to do
-when they were courting as the Youngs.
-
-We ate a number of stuffed eggs which kinder made up for the
-tiredness, me being very fond of them, but Professor Young is crazy
-about Mrs. Young's singing voice and every time we'd come to an extra
-pretty place he would say: "Marie, my love, sing something just here,"
-so we'd have to stand still on our legs, it often being too snaky to
-sit down, while she sang. One time she thought up part of a song
-without a speck of tune to it, and it was in a language across the
-ocean. All I could make out was "Parsifal," and every once in a while
-she would stop a minute in the song and say a word that sounded like
-"Itch," though I don't suppose it was, being in a song. Every time she
-would say itch he would scratch, for the poor man was covered with
-ticks.
-
-But the most trying thing was the bugs and butterflies, which being
-"naturalists" they caught. We had to run all over the ground and sides
-of the hills for them, and empty our dinner out on a nice, shady rock,
-so we could use the lunch box to put them in. When we got back we
-found it all covered with ants, but we were so hungry we thought we'd
-brushed them all off, though in the cake we found we _hadn't_. If a
-person hasn't ever eaten an ant, my diary, there ain't any use in
-trying to make them understand what they taste like, so I won't dwell
-on that. Professor Young said though he was willing to eat them for
-the sake of his beloved science, though I don't see how it helped
-science any.
-
-Toward evening we got to a fine place in the branch to wade and Mrs.
-Young said, oh, let's do it; it would remind us of our childhood days.
-So we soon had our feet bare, with our thoughts on our childhood days,
-and never once stopping to remember that we didn't have a thing to
-wipe them on. Nobody said so much as towel until we got out, and then
-it was too late, so we were very much pained and annoyed every step of
-the way home on account of our gritty feet.
-
-Another morning early we decided to go out and see the sun rise, like
-Thoreau. (They tell me how to spell all the odd words.) We went up to
-the tiptop of a high hill, and when the sun was just high enough to
-make you squint your eyes Mr. Young remarked that he realized his life
-was "replete with glorious possibilities," and he said in such moments
-he felt that he could "encompass his heart's desire." He said he fain
-would be a novelist. Now, this is the only subject they ever fall out
-about, for he's always wanting to be something that he is not. Last
-winter when he met Doctor Gordon at Rufe's he decided he wanted to be
-a doctor, for he said they could always make a living, no matter where
-they were, while a poor college professor had to stay wherever he had
-a chair to sit in. So he went to a store where you buy rubber arms and
-legs and things and bought a long black bag like Doctor Gordon's, full
-of shiny, scary-looking scissors and knives which cost seventy-five
-dollars, to lay away till fall when the doctor's school opened up
-again. In two weeks Mrs. Young had got the store man to take the
-things back for half price because Professor Young had decided he
-wanted to study banjo playing instead of doctoring and had bought a
-banjo trimmed with silver.
-
-She knew whenever he said he wanted to _be_ anything it would cost as
-much as two new dresses, and then have to be exchanged for something
-else, so she asked him if he would have to buy anything to begin this
-novel-writing business with. He proudly told her no, for his "Mother
-Nature had endowed him with a complete equipment," and he thumped his
-forehead between his eyes and his straw hat. Then she told him to go
-on. He said it would be a good time to get material from the study of
-the "primitive creatures" around here in the country.
-
-I hoped these "primitive creatures" were not the kind of insects you
-would have to empty the lunch box for, nor be careful not to pull off
-their hind legs while you were catching them, not knowing just what
-they were.
-
-I was scared good when he said he thought the girl that milked Mrs.
-Hedges' cows would be a good one to begin on. He said if Marie didn't
-mind he would go over to the farthest pasture where he could see her
-then and _draw her out to see what was in her_! This sounded terrible
-to me, knowing that he used some sickly smelling stuff on the bugs
-that killed them before they had time to say a word, and I thought
-maybe because Emma Belle was a poor servant girl he was going to do
-her the same way.
-
-He had always seemed such a kind-hearted man to me, and I saw him and
-Emma Belle standing at the fence talking and he was not trying to hold
-anything to her nose, still I didn't feel easy till he got back. Mrs.
-Young asked him what he had learned, and if his novel would be along
-"socialistic lines" or a "romance in a simple bucolic setting." That
-"bucolic" reminded me of Bertha's little innocent baby, and I wished I
-was at home nursing it even if it did cry, rather than be out
-sun-rising with such a peculiar man. He said it would be a "pastoral,"
-and that the girl's eyes were exactly like his first sweetheart's,
-which was remarkable. Mrs. Young spoke up right quick and said there
-wasn't anything remarkable in _that_, because all common, country
-girls looked alike and they all had about as much expression as a
-squash.
-
-We haven't been out early acting like Thoreau any more, for Mrs. Young
-said it was the most foolish of all the foolish things Augustus had
-made her do, and he could continue to associate with milkmaids by
-himself if he wanted to, which he has. This morning she came over to
-our house early to ask mother if you singed a picked chicken over a
-blaze or what, and if she didn't think Thoreau was an idiot. Mother
-said yes, you did, if it had pin feathers on it, and she didn't know
-much about Thoreau, but she preferred men that paid taxes and ate off
-of white tablecloths. Mrs. Young said she thought all men that read
-bugology and admired pictures like Hosea were a little idiotic and she
-wished she had married a man like father. Mother said well, she
-better not be too sure, for they all have their faults.
-
-After a good long time Professor Young came in, not finding Marie at
-the bungalow, looking awful hot and cross. The sight of him seemed to
-make Mrs. Young feel worse than ever and she told him she had just
-come over to consult mother about her journey home to-morrow, although
-she hadn't mentioned it to us before. She went on to say that _he_
-might spend the rest of the summer, or the rest of his life if he
-wanted to, boarding over at Mrs. Hedges' where he could see Emma Belle
-morning, noon and night, instead of only in the morning. He said why,
-he was utterly surprised for she hadn't mentioned such a thing to him
-before, but she told him he hadn't spent enough time with _her_ lately
-even to know whether or not she still retained the power of speech. He
-said right quick, oh, he never doubted _that_! She said, well, _she_
-was going and he needn't argue with _her_. He said he wasn't going to
-argue, he was only too glad to leave such a blasted place, for he
-wanted material for his novel, but the farmer's girl he had talked
-with the _first_ morning, and the _plow-boys_ he had been associating
-with ever since were all such fools he couldn't get any material from
-them.
-
-The minute he said that she seemed to feel better and change her mind.
-She said Augustus ought to be ashamed to talk that way about poor
-ignorant things which never had any opportunities! He said he wanted
-to go back to the city anyway where there was a bath-tub, but she told
-him he was very foolish to think about leaving such a cool, "Arcadian"
-spot; their friends would all laugh at them for coming back so soon.
-She said she had merely mentioned going back for _his_ pleasure, for
-all the world knew how she _loved_ the country. He finally said he
-loved it too, so they would stay, but he would be forced to give up
-novel-writing because the country people around here are all fools.
-
-I've heard Professor Young talk about sitting in a college chair being
-a hard life, and Doctor Gordon says doctoring is a hard life, and Rufe
-says that editing is a hard life, but, my diary, between you and me,
-from the looks of things this morning, I kinder believe that marrying
-is a hard life, too.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-
-Did you ever think what a dear old thing anybody's black mammy is, my
-diary, especially when she's done all the cooking (and raised you) for
-twenty-five years? Mammy Lou has belonged to us just like father and
-mother ever since we've been at housekeeping, and my heart almost
-breaks to-night when I think of the fire in our stove that won't burn
-and the dasher in our churn that is still. Ever since I've been
-keeping a diary I've been awfully glad to hear about anybody being in
-love, and took great pleasure in watching them and writing it all out,
-for I could _always_ imagine it was _me_ that was the lady. But I
-would rather never keep a diary another day than to have such a thing
-happen to Mammy Lou.
-
-When mother heard about it she said not to be an old fool, but Mammy
-Lou said, "either Marse Shakespeare or Marse Solomon said a old fool
-was the biggest fool and she wasn't going to make him out no lie. So
-marry that Yankee nigger she was!"
-
-Bill Williams first came here to teach school, being very proud and
-educated. Then he got to be Dilsey's beau and they expected to marry.
-When he first commenced going to see Dilsey Mammy Lou would cook the
-nicest kind of things for her to take to picnics, hoping to help her
-catch him in a motherly way. But when he started to promising to give
-Dilsey a rocking-chair and take her to "George Washington" if she
-would marry him, Mammy Lou changed about. She had always wanted to see
-a large city _herself_, and she thought it wasn't any use of letting
-Dilsey get all the best things in life, even if she was her child.
-
-Pretty soon she commenced wearing red ribbon around her neck and
-having her hair wrapped fresh once a week. Then she told him she was
-the good cook that cooked all the picnic things, and ironed all of
-Dilsey's clean dresses; also that she had seventy-five dollars saved
-up that she would be willing to spend on a grand bridal trip the next
-time she got married. Mammy Lou is a smart old thing, and so she
-talked to him until he said, well, he would just as soon marry her as
-Dilsey, if she would stop cooking for us, and cook for _him_ and iron
-_his_ shirts all the time. She promised him she would do this, like
-people always do when they're trying to marry a person, although it
-looks very different afterward. None of mammy's other husbands had
-been so proud. _They_ would not only let her cook, but would come
-around every meal time, in the friendliest kind of way, and help her
-draw a bucket of water. This is why the whole family's heart is
-breaking and we feel so hungry to-night. She's quit, and the wedding
-is to-morrow.
-
-This morning early she came up to the house to ask mother if it would
-be excusable to take off her widow's bonnet, not being divorced from
-Uncle Mose but four months; also how she had better carry her money to
-keep Bill from getting "a holt" of it. She said she wouldn't trust any
-white Yankee with a half a dollar that she ever saw, much less a
-coffee-colored one. Mother was so mad at her, and so troubled about
-the sad biscuits and the watery gravy at breakfast that she said she
-hoped he would steal every cent of the seventy-five dollars before the
-ceremony was over, and maybe _that_ would bring her to her senses.
-
-"And me not to get to go to George Washington!" mammy said in a
-hurt-like voice. "Why, Mis' Mary!"
-
-"Where is this George Washington?" mother took time to ask, thinking
-mammy would know she was just poking fun at her, but she didn't.
-
-"Law! Ain't it surprising how little my white folks do know! Why, it's
-the place where the president and his wife lives. Mr. Williams is
-mighty well acquainted with the president and says he's shore I could
-git a job cooking for the fambly if I was 'round lookin' for jobs. But
-I ain't to cook for nobody but _him_ from now on."
-
-Mother didn't encourage her to talk about her love and matrimony any,
-so she took me by the hand and we went out and sat down on the kitchen
-doorstep and had a long conversation. She seemed mighty sad at the
-notion of leaving us, but was so delighted at the idea of marrying a
-young man (as anybody naturally _would be_) that she couldn't think of
-giving that up. Pretty soon in our conversation she commenced telling
-me about the things that happened many years ago, when I was a little
-child, like they say folks do when they're going on a long journey or
-die.
-
-She began from the time I was born, and said I was such a brown little
-thing that I looked like I had tobacco-juice running through me
-instead of blood. And I made use of a bottle until I was four years
-old. Because I was the only one of mother's and father's children that
-lived and was born to them like Isaac (_I_ don't know of any special
-way that Isaac was born, but two of mammy's husbands have been
-preachers, so _she_ knows what she's talking about) they let me keep
-the bottle to humor me. It had a long rubber thing to it so I would
-find it more convenient. Mammy said the old muley cow was just laid
-aside for my benefit, they thought so much of me, and when I got big
-enough to walk I'd go with her into the cow-lot every hour in the day
-and drag my bottle behind me to be milked into. I enjoyed being milked
-into my mouth, too, if my bottle was too dirty to hold it just then.
-
-Mammy said I always admired the sunshine so much that I would sit out
-in it on hot days till my milk bottle would clabber, which was one
-cause of my brownness. When I found out I couldn't draw anything up
-through the rubber, being all clabbered, I'd begin to cry and run with
-my bottle to mammy. And she would quiet me by digging out all the
-clabber with a little twig and feed it to the chickens. They got to
-knowing the sound of me and my bottle rattling over the gravels so
-well that they'd all come a running like they do when they hear you
-scrape the plates.
-
-This, of course, was very touching to us both and we nearly cried when
-she talked about going off to Washington where the people are too
-stylish to keep a muley cow. They won't even keep a baby in the
-families there, but the ladies keep little dogs and get divorces.
-
-Mother wouldn't go to the wedding, for dinner and supper were worse
-than breakfast. The rest of the family all went except Dilsey, who
-didn't much like the way her mother had treated her about Bill.
-Professor and Mrs. Young went, being still down there and a great
-pleasure to us all. They were delighted, being raised up North, and
-wanted to take pictures of everything. Whenever we would pass a cabin
-door with a nigger and his guitar sitting in it and picking on it
-they would stop and say that it was so "picturesque." And the real old
-uncles with white hair and the mammies with their heads tied up they
-said reminded them of "Aunty Bellum days."
-
-Everything went off as nice as could be expected under the
-circumstances until the preacher said, "Salute your bride." Then, when
-Bill started to kiss her, Mammy Lou laid her hand against the side of
-his head so hard you could have heard the pop up to the big house and
-said she would show him how to be impudent to a woman of sixty, even
-if he was a Yankee and educated. Everybody passed it off as a joke,
-but the slap didn't seem to set very well with Bill, being nineteen
-years old and not used to such. We left right after the ceremony and
-Mammy Lou and the others walked on down to her house to wait for the
-twelve o'clock train that they were going to leave on.
-
-Although I always enjoy going to places with the Youngs on account of
-the curious words and the camera they use, and although it was the
-sixth marriage of my old nurse, which you don't get a chance to see
-_every_ day, still when I think of breakfast, I must say it was the
-saddest wedding I ever witnessed.
-
-
-This morning when I first woke up and heard that regular old tune,
-_Play on Your Harp, Little David_, coming so natural and lifelike from
-the kitchen I thought surely it must be a dream, mammy being hundreds
-of miles away in Washington. The song kept on, though, just like it
-has done every morning for twenty-five years, mother says:
-
-      "_Shad_-rach, _Me_-shach, _Abed_-ne-_go_,
-      The _Lord_ has _washed_ me _white_ as _snow_,"
-
-so I got up. It never does take me a minute to wash my face of a
-morning, and this morning it took even less time. I hopped into my
-clothes and flew down-stairs. It wasn't any dream! There was mammy,
-not looking like she was married nor anything, and a good, cheerful
-fire in the stove, and the bacon smelling like you were nearly
-starved. I didn't ask any questions, but just said, "Mammy," and she
-said, "Baby," and there I was hugging her fit to turn over the churn.
-I asked her if mother knew that she come back and she said no, she had
-been easy and not made any noise, so as to surprise us all. I reckon
-mother and father are so used to having Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
-wake them up of a morning that they thought it was a dream, too.
-Pretty soon they heard us talking though and came in. Mother came
-first, for it is the gentleman's place to let the lady go first into
-the kitchen, especially when they think that breakfast is to be got.
-
-Mother said, "What are you doing here?" and Mammy Lou said, "Getting
-breakfast, Mis' Mary," which was about as straightforward as they
-could have been with each other. Mother asked her if she wasn't still
-married, and she said no, for she had "had occasion to give that
-uppish Yankee nigger a good whippin' las' night." And then she went on
-to say that she told Dilsey _she_ could have him if she still wanted
-him, and said she hoped Dilsey would take him for she would just
-_admire_ to be mother-in-law to that nigger.
-
-Just then father came in, hearing the last remark about "that nigger,"
-and asked Mammy Lou what the trouble was between her and her new
-husband. Mammy was breaking eggs into the big yellow bowl which she
-was going to scramble for breakfast, and as she commenced telling us
-about her marrying troubles she began to beat them very hard, which
-seemed to ease her. It is a great help to people to think of their
-enemies when they are beating things, for it makes them beat all the
-harder and don't really hurt the enemies.
-
-Mammy said when they got home from the wedding she started to change
-her white dress and veil and put on her good cashmere dress to ride
-on the train in. Just about that time Mr. Williams spoke up and said
-he was sleepy and wanted to get a good night's rest so he was going to
-bed, but he wanted mammy to have him a nice rare steak for his
-breakfast. Mammy then asked him if he had been born a fool or just
-turned that way since he had married so far above his station. He said
-he would mighty soon find out who the _fool_ was in that family--and
-she better have good beaten biscuits to go with the steak. When he
-said this mammy gave him another sample of her strength like she did
-in the church and told him to get out of there and change his clothes
-to go to George Washington. Then he gave a big ha! ha! laugh in her
-face, right before Dilsey and the neighbors and said why, didn't she
-know that George Washington had been dead and buried behind the church
-door for a hundred years? He kept on laughing and said the "ignorance
-of country niggers is really amusable."
-
-Mammy said she hated to do it with her veil on, being a new veil and
-she hadn't used it but twice, but she couldn't wait to take it off,
-him grinning like a picture-taking man at his funny joke. All his
-teeth were showing, and, as mammy had always admired them for being so
-big and white, she decided she would keep a handful to remember him
-by; so she gave him one good lick in the mouth with her wedding
-slipper, which was large and easy to come off. This broke a good half
-of his front tooth, she said, besides drawing a lot of blood to
-relieve her feelings. While he was busy wiping away the blood and
-trying to open his eyes enough to see candle-light again, mammy sat
-down by him, and, before he knew it, she had dragged him across her
-lap and was paddling him like he was her own dear son instead of her
-husband. Then she called Dilsey and told her she might feel safe about
-marrying him now, if she still wanted him, for he had better sense
-than to try to fool with any member of _that_ family again. Mammy Lou
-said of course _she_ couldn't stay married to a man she could paddle.
-She was too much of a lady. But Dilsey turned up her nose and said she
-wouldn't have any second-hand nigger, much less a whipped one.
-
-Father spoke up then and said she couldn't give Bill to Dilsey without
-getting a divorce from him first. Mammy Lou said, well, Marse Sheriff
-might arrest her and Marse Judge might fine her, but she would see
-them all in the place that was prepared for them before she would
-waste twenty-five dollars for just _that_ little speck of marrying!
-
-Father went on out to feed the chickens and mother went to wake up
-Bertha (but not the baby) for breakfast, and Mammy Lou scraped the
-eggs into the dish I had brought her.
-
-"Divorce _nothin'_," I heard her remark as she soused the hot skillet
-into water that sizzled, "I done bought a hundred dollars' worth o'
-divorces _already_, and if the lawyers wasn't all scribes and
-Pharisees they'd let _that_ run me the rest o' my days."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-
-"Yuletide in the Southland" is what Professor Young calls it, but you
-would never know from the sound how nice it really is. It means that
-the Youngs have come down to the bungalow to spend Christmas and have
-brought his brother, Julius, to spend it too. Now, I admire Mr. Julius
-Young, both his name and his ways. He noticed me the minute he got off
-the train and said I would have to be his sweetheart. Although I have
-learned, from being so deceived by Doctor Gordon's remarks like that,
-you mustn't depend on what they say, still you can't help but like a
-person when they say it to you.
-
-He is not a college professor like his brother, but he makes his
-living drawing pictures. Now, the bad part about making your living
-out of poetry or art is that so _often_ you don't do it. This is the
-way with Julius. He draws fully as good as other artists, but he never
-has been able to get people to notice it. Professor Young says his
-work lacks "the divine spark," and so the poor young man has to heat
-his coffee over the gas-jet, like they always have to do in pitiful
-magazine stories. So much poetry and art have made him real thin, with
-strange flannel shirts, and he looks half like a writing person and
-half like a hero which was raised out West. He doesn't act as peculiar
-as he looks, though, laughing as jolly as Mr. Parkes if anything funny
-happens. And he knows so much about horses, having traveled
-considerable, that father thinks he is very clever. Father says you
-can excuse an artist with horse sense better than you can just a plain
-artist.
-
-Rufe and Cousin Eunice are down in the country too, partly at our
-house and partly at Rufe's folks'. This makes a nice reunion for
-them, being as Marcella, Rufe's sister, is home for the first time in
-three Christmases, having been off studying how to play on the piano.
-
-Ever since during the chestnuts getting ripe Marcella has been good
-friends with me, for she loves the outdoors, and there wasn't anybody
-but me that had the time to spare to go with her through the woods.
-She felt sorry for me, too, not getting to go back to school in the
-city this fall, and so she has taught me a lot. Mother and father said
-they just couldn't spare me, being the only one that lived, and born
-to them in their old age. It looks like if my brothers and sisters had
-known how inconvenient it was for me to be the only child they would
-have tried a little harder to live.
-
-Marcella is not pretty in a blonde-headed way, like Ann Lisbeth and
-Bertha, but her hair and eyes are as dark as chocolate candy when
-you've grated a whole half a cake in it, and her skin looks like cream
-does when it's nearly ready to churn. She wouldn't go with me and Rufe
-and Cousin Eunice to meet the Youngs at the train, being ashamed on
-Julius' account, I reckon, both being single. But _we_ went and
-Professor and Mrs. Young said they were too happy for anything to be
-back in the country again for a regular old-fashioned Christmas. They
-said they were going to do everything just like it used to be in old
-England, which Professor Young had brought a book along to read about.
-They said this book would "infuse a genuine Yule spirit," but if they
-had scraped as many cake pans and seeded as many raisins as I have
-they would have more of that spirit now than they could hold without a
-dose of cordial.
-
-Well, this morning we collected on the other side of the creek to go
-after holly to decorate the bungalow with, me, the Youngs, and Rufe
-and Cousin Eunice. Julius said a good many compliments about the
-nature you could see all over the hills, but Rufe said shucks, if he
-had _plowed_ over that nature as often as _he_ had it wouldn't look so
-pretty.
-
-Cousin Eunice said let's go straight up through the woods and maybe we
-would meet Marcella coming back from a poor person's house where she
-had been to carry sick folks' things to. This plan must have been made
-up between them, for, sure enough, when we got to the tip-top of the
-hill we found Marcella sitting under some cedar trees resting, and
-leaning back against one, just like it was done for a purpose. She had
-on her red hat and her little red jacket, which set off her pale looks
-considerable, and if she _did_ do it for the sake of Julius she knew
-the right way to get on the good side of an artist, for he commenced
-acting impressed from the start. If a person is trying to be romantic
-it is a better plan to meet a man under a cedar tree with a tired
-expression than it is to sprain your ankle so they will have to carry
-you home in their arms, like they do in books. I don't know _why_
-authors sprain so many of their characters' ankles, and then let them
-make love smelling of liniment.
-
-Mother says in olden times people married each other because the
-ladies were pretty and could make good cakes and the young men were
-able to take care of them, but nowadays they marry because they "feel"
-the same way about things. This is called congenial, and an _overly_
-congenial person is an "affinity." Cousin Eunice and Rufe felt the
-same way about Keats and married. Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth both
-loved white hyacinths and married, and this morning I heard Marcella
-and Julius say they felt the same way about music. Marcella was
-playing on the piano in our parlor and we were all listening when
-Julius remarked:
-
-"Oh, isn't it rare to find a woman who can properly interpret
-Beethoven?"
-
-Father was in the room and spoke up. "Yes," he said, "and rarer still,
-in these days, to find one who can properly interpret the
-_bake-oven_."
-
-Marcella thinks the world and all of Beethoven and Wagner and other
-persons whose names are not spelt the way you would think.
-
-  [Illustration: For the sake of Julius _Page 108_]
-
-Later, when there wasn't anybody present but just those two, I heard
-Julius ask Marcella if she would "sit" to him. I thought at first he
-must be proposing, for the folks around here say that Widow Hollis is
-"setting up to" anybody when she's trying to marry. But Marcella said
-right away that she would be delighted, which I knew couldn't mean
-marrying, for when a young lady gets proposed to she never even _lets
-on_ how glad she is, much less says _delighted_ right out in plain
-words. He said her face was the purest Greek he ever saw, which didn't
-make her mad, although it would me, for a Greek is a smiling,
-oily-looking person which runs a candy kitchen.
-
-When he mentioned her face looking like a Greek's face she acted so
-pleased that he went on to tell her he had never been so impressed
-with anybody's looks in his life as he was with hers that first day
-under the cedar tree. He said oh, if he had such a model he could do
-_anything_, for he was sure she had soul as well as beauty. The idea
-of him telling her she had a soul--as if anybody but foreign heathens
-didn't have! She said she thought it would be a noble life to be a
-model and inspiration to a man of lofty ideals--like Dan T. Gabriel
-Rosetty's wife was, only sometimes the _woman_ was starved. If I'd
-been Marcella I'd been ashamed to mention such a thing as not getting
-enough to eat, but it seemed to please Julius, for he got over closer
-and commenced making a sketch of her on the back of an envelope.
-
-
-This morning early Mrs. and Professor Young came over to ask father
-where they could find a Yule log and a peacock. They said in the
-"eternal fitness of things" they must have a log to burn all Christmas
-night and a peafowl to serve with "brilliant plumage" at the dinner
-table. Mrs. Young went around to the kitchen to ask Mammy Lou if she
-knew how to prepare the peacock the way they wanted it and brought to
-the table in its feathers with the tail spread. Mammy wasn't a speck
-more polite than she was last summer about the roosters.
-
-"No, _ma'am_," she told her, "Mis' Mary won't let even so much as a
-pin feather come on her table, much less a whole crittur covered with
-'em. Looks like _that_ would turn a nigger's stomach, let alone white
-folks; but there ain't no 'countin' for the taste o' _Yankees_."
-
-Professor Young tried to explain that he was cooked without the
-feathers which was put on afterward and an old English custom, but
-that wouldn't pacify mammy.
-
-"Well, all I can say for the old English is that they must have
-stomachs on 'em like _buzzards_," mammy told them.
-
-The Yule log was easier and so they got that, but it isn't to be lit
-till to-morrow night with ceremony.
-
-Julius and Marcella had a long walk through the woods after
-sarsaparilla vines this afternoon, and talked a good deal about how
-they would like a house furnished if they were going to furnish one.
-They never got as far as the kitchen and smokehouse, but they both
-agreed that they would love better than anything in the world to have
-a dark green library with dull brass jardinieres. (I had a _terrible_
-time with that word.) Julius then spoke up and said _any_ kind of a
-library that had her in it would be artistic enough for _him_, which I
-thought was saying a great deal, for artists make out like they can't
-live without their "atmosphere," meaning battered-up tea-kettles and
-dirty curtains from Persia. Marcella must have thought he meant
-something by it, too, for she turned as red as when you have a
-breaking out.
-
-I helped mother and mammy considerable this morning by tasting all the
-things to see if they were just right, for we are going to have a big
-dinner to-morrow and invite them all.
-
-To-night we all went over to the bungalow to hear Professor Young read
-about how they used to do Christmas things in England before the
-Pilgrim Fathers. It sounded awful nice about the waifs singing, "God
-rest you, merry gentlemen," on the outside of your window, and the
-servants at dinner bringing in the boar's head, singing too. Professor
-Young said he thought these old customs ought to be revived,
-especially in the South, where we had old-timey houses and old family
-servants. Father laughed and said, well, we _might_ get Mammy Lou to
-bring in the turkey to-morrow to the tune of "There _wuz_ er moanin'
-lady, she _lived_ in er moanin' lan'," which was all the tune she knew
-besides Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, one being about as Christmasy
-as the other.
-
-After a while Mrs. Young started up the chafing-dish and called Julius
-from over in the corner where he and Marcella were talking very easy,
-to help her with the coffee. She hadn't more than said coffee when
-Professor Young picked up his book again.
-
-"Why, Marie, my love," he interrupted her, "coffee is not at all a
-drink in keeping with the season. To preserve the unities we ought to
-have a wassail bowl." Then he read us how easy it was to make up the
-wassail. All you have to do is to take wine, or ale, and sugar and
-nutmeg, mixed with ginger and spice, then have apples and toast and
-roasted crabs floating around in it. You must mix it up in an old
-silver bowl that has been in your family a hundred years with the coat
-of arms on it. A coat of arms is two peculiar animals standing on
-their hind legs pawing at each other.
-
-Mrs. Young said she was as anxious to preserve the unities as
-Augustus, but how could she when there wasn't any wine or ale or
-ginger or crabs, to say nothing of the silver bowl with the coat of
-arms marked on it. Rufe said not to worry, for we might find it hard,
-along toward midnight and day, to preserve much unity between wassail
-and Welsh rabbit, if we ate them together, so the wassail bowl was
-dropped.
-
-
-All during my diary there hasn't been a thing as thrilling to happen
-as what happened to-day, Christmas Day, to Julius and Marcella.
-Getting your arm broken and carried to the hospital by your future
-husband wasn't anything to compare with this.
-
-Everybody was happy at the dinner table, me especially, for besides
-all the books I wanted I got a pyrography set and a pearl ring. I
-don't think any girl is complete without a pearl ring. The company all
-praised mammy's cooking and Julius remarked that after such a dinner
-as that it would be pretty tough on a fellow to go back to town the
-next day and live on coffee heated over the gas-jet and crackers. We
-laughed considerable over the gas-jet, all but Marcella, who didn't
-look funny.
-
-Just as we got the plum pudding burning and Julius had said he wished
-he could paint a picture of it Dilsey came into the dining-room with a
-telegram addressed to Mr. Julius Young. This excited Mammy Lou, who
-admires him very much, so she nearly spilt all the sauce, saying,
-"Thar! I jes' _know_ it's some of yo' folks dead!"
-
-Julius laughed and told her he reckoned not, as all the folks he had
-on earth were right there at the table, and he looked at Marcella when
-he said it in preference to his own brother! Much to all of our
-disappointment Julius never even opened his telegram and read it,
-although we didn't say anything about it. He put it in his pocket and
-went on eating pudding like it wasn't any more to be proud of than
-just a plain mail letter.
-
-After dinner father took them all out in the garden to look at some
-new hotbeds he was having made and Julius and Marcella went into the
-parlor. I stayed in the hall by the door, not being wanted in the
-parlor and not admiring hotbeds much. They didn't sit down, but went
-over and stood by the piano and all of a sudden Marcella said
-nervous-like:
-
-"Why don't you read your telegram? It might contain good news."
-
-"It _is_ good news, I feel sure," he told her, "and I wanted you to be
-the first one to know it--that's the reason I didn't mention it at
-the table."
-
-She said well hurry up and tell her, so he did. He said the day he saw
-her leaning against the cedar tree he thought she was so beautiful
-that he went straight back to the bungalow and made a picture of her
-like she was then and sent it to a large magazine up North which had
-promised to give five thousand dollars to the person which sent them
-the best picture by Christmas, and he believed the telegram was to say
-that his was it. Marcella told him well, he had a high opinion of his
-work to take it for granted that it had won such a prize as _that_.
-
-"Not at all," he said, catching her hand in his, "for it was a picture
-of _you_."
-
-This sounded so loving that I wasn't prepared for what came next. I
-heard them tear open the telegram and Marcella said, "_Good-ness_;"
-and he said, "Well, I'll be--I wasn't looking for this!" and it made
-me so interested that before I knew it I was in the parlor, though so
-easy and it nearly dark that I don't think they saw me.
-
-As near as I could make out the telegram told Julius they thought his
-picture was so good they were not only going to give him the prize
-like they promised, but wanted to engage him to draw for them all the
-next year and how much salary would he do it for.
-
-"Why, you can have your green library and brass jardinieres _now_,"
-Marcella said, still holding hands and her voice like it was about to
-cry. He just looked at her and looked a long time without saying a
-word. Finally he put both hands on her shoulders and looked down into
-her eyes.
-
-"I can have nothing without you," he said in the most devoted voice I
-ever heard. "It is your beauty that has made my picture succeed. If I
-amount to anything you will have to come with me--will you?"
-
-"You want me for your model?" she asked very quivery and making out
-like she didn't know what he was driving at, but she put her hands up
-on his shoulders too, which was enough to give her away.
-
-"True, I can not draw without you for my model," he said so grand and
-sweet that it made you feel very strange listening to it, "but I can
-not _live_ without you for my wife."
-
-This won her. It was enough to win _anybody_, coming from an artist,
-and good looking at that.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-
-Being in love with Marcella weighed so on Julius' mind that he
-couldn't stay in New York but one week where the magazine is that he
-draws for, so he came back and has been here ever since, loving and
-drawing and sending them the jobs by mail. Right away they set the
-wedding for the eleventh of April, which seems like it _never_ will
-come, me being in a big hurry for it. Poor Julius gets more and more
-delighted every day, talking a heap about what a happy home they're
-going to have, not realizing that Chopin and dish-pan don't go
-together. He stays around and advises Marcella about her clothes and
-such-like all day long. He says she reminds him of a narcissus, being
-tall and creamy-skinned, so he wants all her dresses to be either
-white or light green, the color of right young lettuce. But she knows
-when really to take his advice and when just to make like she's taking
-it, the way most ladies do with men.
-
-"Why, it would take a little pink milksop like Bertha Parkes to wear
-such colors as _those_," she said behind his back one day. But I don't
-think Marcella better be calling Bertha a _milksop_ just because she
-has to handle baby-bottles all the time, for a person never can tell
-what might happen to them.
-
-One of the nicest things about the wedding is the bridesmaids. They
-consist of girls born partly here in the country, partly in the cities
-Marcella has visited and made friends with. The one I like best is
-Miss Cicely Reeves, though most people around here call her Cis, being
-very small, with fluffy hair and cute ways and dimples. She has a good
-many lovers of different kinds, but don't seem to like one above
-another. She is a great hand to act romantic, such as falling in love
-with a man in a streetcar, or expecting her future husband to be a
-certain size and comb his hair a certain way and things like that.
-This often keeps young ladies from getting married a long time, for
-mother says you oughtn't to be too choice about size and hair, but I
-can't help being on that order myself. I do hope I can marry a man on
-a jet-black charger named Sir Reginald de Beverley who owns _acres_
-and _acres_ of English landed gentry.
-
-Miss Cis had that experience with the _name_ of Julius' best man. It
-happened that we were all sitting on the front step one day when
-Julius pulled a letter out of his pocket and told Marcella that he had
-just heard from Malcolm Macdonald, and that he was going to be his
-best man.
-
-"_Who?_" asked Miss Cis right quick, looking up from the sprig of
-bridal wreath she was pulling the flowers off of.
-
-Julius told her the name over again and then told her that he was a
-very old friend of his and was a fine civil engineer. I used to think
-a civil engineer was a _polite_ man who ran the trains, but I know now
-he is a man that gets in the middle of the street with a string and a
-three-legged thing and measures the road.
-
-"Is he married?" Miss Cis asked a heap quicker than she had asked who.
-
-"No, and not likely to be," Julius answered, still looking over the
-letter absent-mindedly.
-
-"The name sounds good," Miss Cis commenced, her eyes sparkling. "I
-never heard anything Scotchier. Something tells me he must be my
-ideal."
-
-"Then 'something' must be telling you a lie," Julius said laughing,
-"for he couldn't be any woman's ideal. He is very _real_. An old
-bachelor, thirty-seven years, stern and precise; and he considers
-every woman on earth as a frivolous and _un_necessary evil."
-
-"The kind of man I adore," Miss Cis said joyfully, though anybody that
-knew her well could tell she was fooling. "My life will be a blank
-until he comes!"
-
-"It would be a blankety-blank if you had to live with him, for you are
-the kind of woman to torment such a man to death."
-
-"All the more reason for his falling in love with me, as I have fallen
-in love with his name, and if he doesn't I shall consider him a very
-_un_civil engineer." Which was just her way of talking. This happened
-fully two months ago, but they have talked about it off and on ever
-since. And now he is coming to stay with Julius till the wedding, to
-cheer him up I suppose.
-
-
-Sure enough he did come to-day, although lots of times I imagine that
-I never will get to see a person I have heard spoken of so often and
-in such high tones--and sometimes I wish I hadn't. But it wasn't that
-way with Mr. Macdonald. Nobody on earth could have been disappointed
-in _him_ for he is one of the tallest gentlemen I ever saw with
-trousers so smoothly creased that they look like somebody had ironed
-them after he put them on. He takes his own time about saying things,
-being very careful about saying "of whom" and "by which" like the
-grammar tells you to.
-
-Julius brought him over to Marcella's this afternoon so he could be
-making friends with her and the bridesmaids that were collected there.
-Remembering how they had been teasing Miss Cis about him I kept my eye
-on her from the minute he walked through the door. I was greatly
-disappointed though, for she never _seemed_ to notice him. I guess she
-took a better look at him than I imagined though, for the minute they
-were gone she jumped clear across the room to where Marcella was
-standing and grabbed her and danced up and down.
-
-"Isn't he _beautiful_!" she said all out of breath. "I'm just crazy
-about him! Did you ever see such Gibsony feet and legs in your
-_life_?" Which mortified her mother, it being impolite to mention feet
-and legs in her days.
-
-Julius is romantic, too, for a man, and says he doesn't want any
-flowers used in connection with his wedding except the sweet, early
-spring ones that favor Marcella so much. We have a yard full of them
-and so mother told them this morning that they better come over and
-gather them, knowing that young folks enjoy picking flowers together
-and they will stay fresh for several days if you put a little salt in
-the water.
-
-It was the most beautiful morning you ever saw, with birds and peach
-blossoms and the smell of plowed ground all making curious feelings
-inside of you. Marcella, being a musician, noticed the birds, and
-Julius, being an artist, noticed the peach blossoms, but Mr.
-Macdonald, being just a man, noticed Miss Cis. She would walk along
-without noticing him and take a seat in the farthest corner away from
-him, but anyhow she seemed to do the work, which taught me a lesson;
-that if you're trying to get a man to notice you it is the best plan
-not to notice them except when they ain't looking.
-
-They sat down on the porch and rested a while after they came while
-the narcissuses (narcissi _they_ called them, which sounds stuck up to
-me) smelled very sweet from the yard. Julius remarked he wished they
-had made Rufe come along with them so he could have said poetry out of
-Keats, as it was just the kind of day to make you feel Keatsy; and
-pretty soon he and Marcella got on to their favorite subject, "The
-Ruby Yacht," which they say is a piece of poetry from Persia. They
-talked and talked, which made me very sleepy and pretty soon I noticed
-that Mr. Macdonald was getting sleepy too. He leaned over to Miss Cis
-and said, kinder whispery:
-
-"I don't understand poetry, do you?"
-
-"No, I don't," she answered back, with a smile on her face which I
-knew she meant to be "congenial." I knew this was a story, for she
-talks about "The Ruby Yacht" as much as anybody when he ain't around,
-but I didn't blame her for telling one in a case like this.
-
-"I never could discover what the deuced Ruby Yacht was about, in the
-first place," he said.
-
-"It looks like, from the name," I said speaking up, "that it would be
-about a red ship," but before I could get any further they began to
-laugh and tell my remark to Julius and Marcella, which was mortifying.
-This broke up the poetry talk and they began gathering the flowers,
-Miss Cis and Mr. Macdonald picking in pairs, by which I knew they were
-getting affinityfied.
-
-After they had picked till their backs were tired Mammy Lou came out
-on the porch bringing a waiter with some of her best white cake and a
-bottle of her year-before-last-before-that's wine setting on it and
-her finest ruffled cap, very proud. She was curious to see the young
-man "Miss Cis was settin' up to, to see whether the match was a
-fittin' one or not." She took a good look at him, then called Miss Cis
-into the hall to speak her opinion.
-
-"He'll _do_," I heard her saying, while Miss Cis was telling her to
-"s-s-sh, Mr. MacDonald would hear her."
-
-"He'll _do_," mammy kept on, not paying any attention to what was told
-her, like she always don't. "He must be all right, for bein' a frien'
-o' Mr. Juliuses would pass 'im.' But, honey, he _is_ tolerable
-_po_-faced, which ain't no good sign in marryin'. If thar's anybody
-better experienced in that business than _me_ and King Solomon I'd
-like to see the whites o' ther eyes; an' I tell you every time, if you
-want to get a good-natured, wood-cuttin', baby-tendin' husban' choose
-one that's _fat in the face_!"
-
-A good many wedding presents commenced to coming in this morning,
-which was a sign that the invitations got to the people all right. You
-often hear of things being worth their weight in silver, but there's
-_one_ thing you can count on it's being true about and that is wedding
-invitations. You never saw such delighted people as Julius and
-Marcella. They were laid out on tables in the parlor and greatly
-admired.
-
-"They're _ours_, dearest," he said, squeezing her hand right before
-everybody, "yours and mine! Our Lares and Penates."
-
-This greatly impressed me and I looked it up in the back of the
-dictionary when I got home, which is a very useful place to find
-strange words. It said: "Lares et Penates, household gods," which
-didn't make sense, so I knew the dictionary man must have made a
-mistake and meant to say household _goods_.
-
-"Gentle-_men_!" said Mammy Lou when I told the words to her, "if he
-thinks up such names as _them_ for his fu'niture what _will_ he do
-when he gets to his chil'en?"
-
-This remark seemed to put an idea into her head, for Lovie, mammy's
-other daughter besides Dilsey, has got a pair of two little twins that
-have been going around for the last five years in need of a name just
-because Mammy Lou and Ike, their father, can't ever agree on one--a
-name nor anything else.
-
-"Them's the very names for the little angels," Mammy said, washing
-the dinner dishes deep in thought, "for the twins bein' boys and girls
-and the names bein' able to accommodate therselves to ary sect proves
-that they're the _very thing_." She studied over it for a good while,
-I guess on account of Ike, although mammy is usually what she calls
-very plain-spoken with him. A plain-spoken person is one that says
-nasty things to your face and expects you not to get mad. When they
-say them behind your back they're "diplomatic." But finally she
-started off to name them, and, having had so much trouble already with
-Ike, I saw her slip her heavy-soled slippers into her pocket before
-she started. She stayed away a long, long time, but when she got back
-she held her head so high and acted so stuck-up that I just knew she
-had got to use both the names and the slippers.
-
-"Did you name 'em?" I asked her, going to the kitchen to get some
-tea-cakes, supper being very late.
-
-"_Did I?_" she answered back, cutting out the biscuits with a haughty
-look, "you just oughter a _saw_ me namin' 'em!"
-
-"Which did you name which?" I asked.
-
-"I named the precious boy Penates, because I most know these common
-niggers roun' here'll shorten it to 'Peanuts' which would be hurtin'
-to a little girl's feelin's."
-
-"Well," I said, continuing to show a friendly interest, "ain't you
-glad they're named at last, so's if they die you could have a
-tombstone for them?"
-
-"Glad!" she answered, putting the biscuits in the pan (but her mind
-still on the twins), and sticking holes in the top of them with a
-fork, "glad ain't no name for it! Why, I ain't had as much enjoyment
-out o' nothin' as I had out o' this namin' sence the night I married
-Bill Williams!"
-
-
-It's a very thrilling and exciting thing to be a bride and if you
-can't be a bride you can still manage to get a good many thrills out
-of just a bridesmaid. All of Marcella's have talked about how nervous
-and timid they are going to be--when the men are around--and some say
-they nearly faint when a great crowd stares at them, others say they
-bet folks will think they've got St. Vituses' dance from trembling so;
-anyhow, they're all very modest. But Miss Cis, I believe, ain't
-putting on, for all she claims toward modestness is that her knees get
-so weak that they nearly let her drop when she acts a bridesmaid,
-which is the way a good many persons feel. The maids have laughed a
-good deal over her knees among themselves, never dreaming that the men
-would catch on to them, but they did in the following manner:
-
-Miss Cis stayed all night at Marcella's last night to tell secrets for
-the last time, for after a lady is married you can't be too careful
-about telling her your secrets; and early this morning I ran over and
-saw her dressed in a pretty blue kimono, which set off her good looks
-greatly, down by the woodpile which they keep in the side yard. There
-is a hedge of honeysuckle which runs between the garden and the yard
-and she appeared to be searching on the ground for something close to
-this hedge. I went up to where she was, admiring her company, and she
-smiled when she saw me.
-
-"Ann," she said, very pleasantly, "can you help me find two nice,
-little, smooth, thin boards?"
-
-I complimented her on her kimono and said yes'm to the board question,
-then asked her what she wanted with them.
-
-"My knees," she answered laughing, "they're so idiotic that when I get
-excited they threaten to let me drop. If I could strap two nice little
-boards to them, at the back, you know, it would prop them up and be
-_such_ a help!"
-
-"You couldn't walk very good," I told her, but she said oh, yes she
-could; and to prove it she commenced whistling the wedding march and
-walking stiff-kneed away from the woodpile to the tune of it. She
-looked so funny that I started to laugh, when just then I heard
-another laugh on the other side of the honeysuckle vines. I found a
-place where I could peep through and saw it was Julius and Mr.
-Macdonald who had come out to view Mr. Clayborne's hotbeds, and
-greatly complimenting them, Julius knowing that it's a fine thing to
-stay on the good side of your father-in-law in case you lose your job.
-
-I knew they heard what Miss Cis had said, for they were laughing very
-hard, which caused Mr. Macdonald to look real young, being as his eyes
-can twinkle. I knew it would be mortifying for her to see that they
-had heard her, so I hollered and told her that I heard Marcella
-calling her from the up-stairs window, so she ran right on in without
-coming back to the woodpile. I started to go on after her, but just as
-I got to the kitchen door I remembered that I had left my pretty white
-sunbonnet that Mammy Lou had freshly ironed for me on the woodpile and
-ran back to get it.
-
-Julius and Mr. Macdonald were right where they were, only looking in
-the other direction and talking very seriously, so I stayed a minute
-out of friendly interest.
-
-"Although so bright and amusing she is never silly," I heard Mr.
-Macdonald's long, slow voice saying. "She is a very lovely,
-fascinating little woman." So I took a seat on the woodpile.
-
-"You'd better fall in love with her," Julius said, cutting the briers
-off of a long switch he held in his hand, and talking careless like,
-as if he wasn't paying much attention.
-
-"Your advice comes too late," Mr. Macdonald said, his voice so solemn
-that Julius looked up in surprise.
-
-"What!" Julius remarked.
-
-"Yes," Mr. Macdonald said, sounding very devoted, "I did that very
-thing the first moment I looked at her dear, sweet face."
-
-Julius stared at him a minute, then laughed a tickled laugh; and I
-moved my seat right up to the hedge so I could get a good look at
-them--it was the next best thing to a proposal.
-
-"That's the funniest thing I ever heard of," Julius said after he had
-quit laughing.
-
-"It's devilish funny to _you_," poor Mr. Macdonald said, looking like
-he didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. "But--what am I to do?"
-
-"Do?" said Julius very businesslike, like folks talk when they're
-telling you to follow _their_ example. "What do men in your situation
-usually do? Why, propose to her!"
-
-"But _she'd_ never marry _me_," he said looking right pitiful, for he
-spoke as humble as if he wasn't any taller than me, and him over six
-feet tall. "It would be the most absurd thing in the world for a man
-like me to propose to a woman like her!"
-
-"No, you're wrong," Julius told him, still half laughing, "the _most_
-absurd thing would be that she would accept you!"
-
-I'm awfully tired to-night and it would cramp my hand nearly to death
-to write all about the wedding--how Julius looked happy up to the
-last, and how Marcella cried just enough to appear ladylike on her
-lace handkerchief; and how the family relatives cried a little too.
-Weddings are all alike, but proposals are all different, and I think
-I'd better use more space on them in my diary, so my grandchildren
-won't get sleepy over the sameness. But it would be a waste of
-handwriting to tell how Miss Cis tormented poor Mr. Macdonald all day,
-making him chase around after her trying to get in a private, loving
-word; and me just crazy to see whether she really was going to accept
-him or not, although I _might_ have known!
-
-He followed her up though, looking so brave and determined that he
-reminded me of "The boy stood on the burning deck." She worried him so
-that all through the ceremony he looked so pale and troubled that
-you'd have thought it was _him_ getting married. Finally, just before
-it was time for the train that he was going back to town on to blow
-she changed about and commenced acting sweet.
-
-  [Illustration: He followed her up though _Page 138_]
-
-All this was nice enough to watch, but is cramping to write about,
-and anyhow, the main thing with me was to see whether she was going to
-accept him or not. I stayed close to their heels all day, but he
-didn't get a chance to propose until just after dark, down by the
-front gate, with nobody around except me and a calecanthus bush
-and--well, you just ought to have _seen_ her accepting him!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-
-Ever since my last birthday there has a great change come over me for
-I have not kept my diary. Mother took me to one side that morning and
-said it was time for me to act like I was growing up now. She said
-many a girl as big as me could pick a chicken and I couldn't do a
-thing but write a diary; and would even run and stop up my ears every
-time Mammy Lou started to wring one's head off. She said all the
-ladies of the neighborhood nearly worried her to death advising her to
-teach me how to work and saying it was simply ridiculous for a great
-big girl like me to lie flat on her stomach reading a book all day in
-the grass. This shows how I am misunderstood by my family, and I told
-mother so, but she said for goodness' sake not to get _that_ idea
-into my head, for girls that were always complaining about being
-"misunderstood" were the kind that got divorces from their husbands
-afterward. I know this won't be the way with me, though, for I expect
-to live on good terms with Sir Reginald, always wearing pink satin and
-spangles even around the castle; and never getting mussy-looking when
-I give the children a bath in hopes of retaining his affections, like
-they tell you to in ladies' magazines. But I didn't mention Sir
-Reginald to mother, or she would have misunderstood me worse than
-ever.
-
-Goodness! I reckon the neighbors would have a fit if they could see me
-of a night when I dress up and step out on the porch roof, making like
-I'm Juliet in Shakespeare. I wear a lace thing over my head and let a
-pair of Cousin Eunice's last year's bedroom slippers represent Romeo
-with fur around the top. They are the kind he wore the night they took
-me to see him and are all I can find in the house that looks at all
-like him. Nobody gets to see me doing this, though, for I lock the
-door. Somehow I think it would be a nicer world if you could always
-lock the door on your advising friends.
-
-Last summer Rufe said I was so clever for my age (_he_ said) that I
-ought to be in the city (I like this kind of advice) at a good school;
-so father and mother decided to move to the city and take Mammy Lou
-and spend the winter and all the other winters until I could get
-educated and live in a flat. So we went, me writing much sorry poetry
-about leaving my old home. The older I get the more I think of poetry
-and I reckon by the time I'm engaged I'll be crazy about it!
-
-Our leaving was very sad, poor little Lares and Penates crying so hard
-at the depot where they went to tell Mammy Lou good-by that a drummer
-who was traveling with a kind heart gave them a quarter apiece to
-hush.
-
-I never admired the name of flat from the first and when we started to
-rent one I admired it less than ever. It consists of a very large
-house, divided up, and no place to kill a chicken. There is also no
-place to warm your feet, nor to pop corn. In fact, there are more
-places where you _can't_ do things than where you can. Rufe took us to
-every one in town nearly, and mammy paid particular attention to how
-the kitchens were fixed and asked what became of the potato peelings
-with no pigs to eat them up. Finally, after everything had been
-explained to her, she spoke up in the midst of a lady's flat with
-tears in her eyes and said:
-
-"Mis' Mary, le's go back to the country whar slop is called _slop_; up
-here it's '_gawbage_!'"
-
-Father and mother were both delighted that going back had been
-mentioned without either one of _them_ saying it first, for both of
-their feet were sore from looking for flats; and they like to have
-fallen over each other in agreeing with mammy.
-
-"God never intended for _human beings_ to live in flats," father said,
-after the elevator had put us down on dry land once more, drawing a
-deep breath.
-
-"Nor in cities either," Rufe agreed, with a far-away look in his eyes,
-like he might be thinking of the chestnut hunts and black haws of his
-boyhood.
-
-That night they said well, they had found out they couldn't live in
-the city, and they weren't going to be separated from me, and I _had_
-to be educated; so Rufe then told them that a governess was the next
-best thing. This sounded so much like a young girl in a book that at
-first I was delighted. A governess is a very clean person that always
-expects you to be the same. Only in books they are usually
-drab-colored young ladies without any nice clothes or parents, but the
-son of the family falls in love with them, much to their surprise, and
-they lose their job. Then the son gets sent away to India with his
-regiment, where he hopes he can meet sweet death through a bullet
-hole. This is the way they are in books.
-
-Mine, though, is not anything like that, being very pretty and pink,
-and with a regular father and mother like other folks have. But there
-is a great mystery connected with her. Don't anybody but me know about
-it, and I don't know _all_ about it. From the very first she seemed to
-have something on her mind; this is very unusual for a young girl, so
-I tried to find out what the cause of it was. One day at the dinner
-table when she had been here about two weeks father remarked that I
-was learning faster from her than I ever had, and he hoped that she
-would stay here with us until I was finished being educated and not be
-wanting to get married, like most young ladies. Miss Wilburn, instead
-of laughing as one would expect, turned red in the face (her first
-name is Louise) and said something that sounded like "Oh no!"
-
-Mammy, who was in the room at the time, spoke up as she usually does
-and said well, there must be something wrong with her if she didn't
-want to marry, as all right-minded women married once and extra smart
-ones married as often as there was any occasion to! Instead of smiling
-Miss Wilburn looked more painful than ever; so mammy, who thinks
-enough of her to _even_ do up her shirtwaists, changed the subject.
-
-That night when I went into the kitchen to talk to mammy during the
-cooking her mind was still on the subject of Miss Wilburn and
-marrying.
-
-"Honey," she said to me, flipping over the cakes with great
-conviction, "I've been thinking it over and the long and short of it
-is that pore child's been _fooled_! I know them _symptoms_! She's been
-fooled and she's grievin' over it. Though thar ain't no use for a
-woman to grieve over nary _one_ man so long's she under forty and got
-good front teeth!"
-
-I said oh, I hoped not. I hated to think about the lover of my
-governess proving false! I told mammy maybe he had just died or
-something else he couldn't help. But she interrupted me.
-
-"Died nothin'! That ain't no excuse, for thar's allus time to marry no
-matter what you're fixin' to do. Thar ain't nothin' no excuse for not
-marryin' in this world," she kept on, "be it male or female. You
-needn't be settin' thar swingin' your legs and arguin' with _me_ about
-the holy estate!"
-
-The very first minute I thought there was anything of a loving nature
-connected with Miss Wilburn I got out my diary to write it down, as
-you see. She had told mother anyhow to let me keep it as it would
-"stimulate my mental faculties" and they would never be able to make a
-chicken-picking person out of me. I'm going to keep it right here in
-the drawer and jot down everything I see, although I am _convinced_
-that the lover is dead. Julius and Marcella are down here now for the
-first time since they were married. We see them a great deal, for they
-love to go walking through the woods with Miss Wilburn and me; but I
-can't waste my diary writing about them _now_.
-
-I just happened to think what a pity it was that I didn't try to find
-out the mystery about Miss Wilburn from Rufe and Cousin Eunice when we
-was up there last summer, for they knew her real well before we got
-her. In fact, for the first few days she and I didn't have any
-congenial things to talk about except them and tiny Waterloo.
-Waterloo's little name by rights is Rufus Clayborne, Junior, and he
-occurred at a time when I wasn't keeping my diary; but my
-grandchildren would have known about him anyhow, he being their little
-fifth cousin. He is very different from Bertha's baby, for he is a
-boy. I thought when I first saw him that if there was anything sweeter
-in this world than a girl baby it is a boy one!
-
-Rufe and Cousin Eunice have lately been kinder New Thought persons,
-which think if you have "poise" enough there can't anything on earth
-conquer you. Rufe bragged particularly about nothing being able to
-conquer _him_ or get him in a bad temper, he had so much poise. But
-when little Rufus was just three nights old and he had walked him the
-other _two_ and he was still squalling he threw up his job.
-
-"Poise be hanged!" Cousin Eunice told us he said, "I've met _my_
-Waterloo!" And they've called him that ever since.
-
-When we were up there in the summer Waterloo was giving his father
-considerable trouble about the editorials. An editorial is a smart
-remark opposite the society column; and Rufe couldn't think up smart
-things while he was squalling.
-
-"Oh, for a desert island!" he said one night when he was awful busy
-and couldn't get anything done. "Oh, for a mammoth haystack where I
-might thrust my head to drown the noise--I've read that Jean Jacques
-Rousseau used to do so! Listen, I've made a rhyme!"
-
-"'Tis not rhymes but dimes we need most just now; so go on with your
-work," Cousin Eunice said, gathering Waterloo together to take him
-up-stairs.
-
-"Merely removing the location of the noise will lessen it but
-slightly," Rufe called to her as she got to the door. "Seriously, do
-you know of a hayloft in the neighborhood where I might go?"
-
-"You might go next door to the Williams' garage and thrust your head
-into their can of gasolene--_that's_ the latter-day equivalent for
-hay!" Cousin Eunice answered kinder-mad, for _she_ admires Waterloo,
-no matter how he acts.
-
-So Miss Wilburn and I talked over all we knew about the little fellow;
-and I thought what a mistake I'd made in not asking Cousin Eunice what
-Miss Wilburn's lover's name was and where he is buried and a few other
-things like that. But then I couldn't, because I didn't know that
-there was a lover. Still, Mammy Lou can talk till her hair turns
-straight and she won't get me to believe that he's anything else but
-dead. Everything seems to point to it, from the fact of her not
-getting any letters from young men and looking lonesome at times and
-not wearing any diamond engagement ring. I'm sure he gave her one,
-but maybe his wicked kinfolks made her give it back to them after the
-funeral. Or maybe she buried it in his grave. I don't know why Miss
-Wilburn never talks about him for one of our neighbors talks all the
-time about her husband which was killed in the war. I used to be
-delighted to hear her commence telling about him. He was killed at the
-battle of Shiloh and was the tallest and handsomest man in the army.
-She takes a great deal of pleasure in talking about him, and when
-there are summer boarders at her house he grows to be nearly seven
-feet tall and so handsome that it hurts your eyes to look at him. Her
-second husband is stone deaf and can't hear it thunder, which makes it
-nicer for them, for while it amuses her to talk about her first
-husband's good looks it ain't hurting to the second one's feelings.
-
-The autumn leaves are just lovely now and make you want to write a
-book, or at least a piece of poetry. It's right hard on you, though,
-not to have anything to write about but a girl without a beau. It's
-kinder like eating sweet potatoes without butter. I decided this
-morning that I better make the most of what I have got as a subject,
-so I started to writing one called _The Maiden Widow_. I've heard of a
-book by that name, but I don't reckon they'll have me arrested for
-writing just a short poem by the same name. We have some nature study
-every morning in the woods, which is one of the best things about
-having a governess. She lets me do just as I like, so I took my tablet
-and while she was writing some history questions I composed on my
-poem. It is very discouraging work, though, to write about widows, for
-there's nothing on earth that will rhyme with them. I got one line,
-"The maiden widow, she wept, she did, oh!" which was sorry enough
-sounding, but I didn't know whether or not it was exactly fair to have
-two words rhyming with just one. After a while I thought maybe a
-regular poet could do a better job by it than even I could, so I
-decided to ask Marcella to ask Julius to write me a few lines as a
-copy to go by, for anybody that can draw such lovely pictures ought to
-be able to write poetry.
-
-Marcella came over this afternoon and I took her up-stairs very
-secretly to ask her about it. She said why, what on earth made me
-think that Miss Wilburn was grieving over a dead lover, and I told her
-that _everything_ made me think it. After studying about it for a
-little while she said well, it might be that I was right, for the girl
-did seem to have something preying on her mind. But she said such
-subjects were not suitable for children of my age to be writing about
-and that I ought to write about violets and sparrows. I said then
-would she please find out from Julius whether or not there was a rhyme
-for widow, for I might want to write a poem on them when I got grown,
-but she said, "Ann, you are incorrigible," which I keep forgetting to
-look up in the dictionary, although it looks like I would, for it has
-been said to me so many times.
-
-A thing happened this morning which made me understand what
-Shakespeare must have meant when he said "Much Ado About Nothing." It
-reminded me of the time Cousin Eunice rushed to the telephone and
-called Rufe up and said, "Oh, dearest, the baby's got a tooth!" This
-was harmless enough in itself, but it is when things are misunderstood
-that the trouble comes in. Rufe misunderstood and thought she said,
-"The baby's got the croup," which is very dangerous. So he didn't stop
-to hear another word, but dropped the telephone and grabbed his hat.
-It was night, for Rufe's paper is a morning one that works its men at
-night, and didn't wait for a car, but jumped into a carriage, which
-costs like smoke. He drove by Doctor Gordon's house and told the
-driver to run in and tell Doctor Gordon to come right on and drive to
-his house with him, as his baby was very sick, although Doctor Gordon
-has an automobile of his own. He and Ann Lisbeth happened to have a
-few friends in to play cards with them that night, but when she heard
-the news about the baby she told the company that Cousin Eunice was
-one of the best friends she had in the world and she would have to go
-on over and see if she could help any. So the card party was broken up
-and they all drove as hard as they could tear over to Rufe's house,
-where they found Cousin Eunice tickled to death over the tooth and
-washing Waterloo's little mouth out with boric acid water, which is
-the proper thing. This is what I call much ado about nothing, and I'm
-sure Shakespeare would if he was living to-day.
-
-What happened this morning was equally as exciting and a long story,
-so I'm going to stop and sharpen my pencil, for I despise to write
-exciting things with a pencil that won't half write.
-
-I reckon some people might lay the blame on me for what happened, but
-it ain't so at all, if people hadn't just misunderstood me. Anyhow, it
-may make me "curb my imagination," as Julius says, for that is what
-they blamed it all on.
-
-When we started out for our nature study this morning father said if
-we could stand the sight of human nature a little would we go down
-town right after train time and get the mail? We said yes and
-Marcella, who was with us, said she would be glad to go in that
-direction, for Julius was there and we could meet him and he would
-walk home with us. She still likes to see him every few minutes in the
-day.
-
-There are usually several very handsome drummers and insurance men and
-things like that standing around the post-office which have just got
-off of the train at this hour, but this morning there wasn't anybody
-but one strange man and he was talking to Julius like he knew him.
-When we passed by Julius spoke to us and I noticed that the strange
-man looked at Miss Wilburn and looked surprised. All in a minute I
-thought maybe he was the lover which had just returned from some
-foreign shore, instead of being dead, and would run up with open
-hands and say, "Louise," and she would say, "Marmaduke," and all would
-be well.
-
-I learned afterward, though, that his name is Mr. White and he lives
-in the city and has come down here on business and knew Julius. After
-we had passed he remarked that he was surprised to see Miss Wilburn
-down here as he didn't know she was away from home. Julius asked him
-if he knew Miss Wilburn and he said no, but he knew Paul Creighton,
-the fellow she was going to marry, mighty well. Julius, instead of not
-saying anything as a person ought, spoke up and said why he understood
-that Miss Wilburn's sweetheart was dead. The strange man said why he
-was utterly shocked for he had seen Creighton on the streets only a
-few days before, but he _had_ looked kinder pale and worried then. He
-said it made him feel weak in the knees to hear such a thing, and
-Julius commenced saying something about it must be a mistake then, but
-Mr. White said no, he guessed it was so, for Mr. Creighton had looked
-awful pale and thin, like he might be going into consumption. Julius
-said well he was certain his wife had told him something about Miss
-Wilburn having a dead lover, but he hadn't paid much attention to what
-she was saying, like most married men; but it surely couldn't be so.
-By that time Mr. White was moving down the street to where we were and
-was asking Julius to introduce him to Miss Wilburn, so he could find
-out the particulars about poor old Creighton. I _will_ give Julius
-credit for trying to stop him, but he is one of the kind of persons
-that never knows when to say a thing and when not to, Mr. White, I
-mean. And before Julius could get him side-tracked they had caught up
-with us and there wasn't anything else to do but introduce him. Miss
-Wilburn smiled very joyfully when she heard his name, and in a minute
-he had got her off to one side and I heard him saying something about
-how horrified he was to hear the news about poor Creighton. In just
-an instant Miss Wilburn was the one that looked horrified and said why
-_what_? This seemed to bring Mr. White to his right mind a little and
-instead of going ahead and telling it he turned around to Julius and
-said:
-
-"Why our friend, Young, here, was telling me that----"
-
-"I _told_ you that it must be a mistake," Julius spoke up, looking
-awfully uncomfortable, "but I remember my wife saying that--oh, say,
-Marcella, explain--will you?"
-
-"Why, Julius Young," Marcella commenced in a married-lady tone, "you
-promised me that you wouldn't say a word about it; anyway we only
-suspected----"
-
-"Will _nobody_ tell me what has happened to Paul?" Miss Wilburn said
-in a low, strangled voice, like she couldn't get her breath good.
-
-"Ain't anything happened to him that _we_ know of," I told her, for
-Julius and the rest of them looked like they were speechless. "We
-thought _you_ knew it!"
-
-"Knew _what_? Oh, for the love of Heaven, tell me!" she said, poor
-thing! And I felt awful sorry for us all, but for Miss Wilburn and me
-in particular.
-
-I just couldn't tell her we thought he was _plumb_ dead, so I told her
-we thought he must be very sick or something.
-
-"He may be," she answered, not looking any happier. "I haven't heard
-from him since I've been here! Oh, it serves me right for acting such
-an idiot as to run off down here and forbid his writing to me! He may
-be desperately ill! How did you hear it?"
-
-"Ain't anybody heard it _yet_!" I told her, feeling so angry at
-Marcella and Julius and Mr. White for telling such a thing and so
-ashamed of myself for making it up that I couldn't think very well. I
-kept wishing in my mind that it was the first day of April so I could
-say "April Fool," or an earthquake would happen or _anything_ else to
-pass it off; but didn't anything happen, so I had to stand there with
-all of them looking at me and tell Miss Wilburn how Mammy Lou said
-_she_ believed she had been fooled because she looked so sad at the
-mention of marrying, but _I_ believed the gentleman was dead.
-
-Well, it took every one of us every step of the way home to explain it
-to her and to each other, each one of us talking as hard as we could;
-and Julius remarked what he'd do the next time he heard any such
-"sewing-society tales" under his breath.
-
-Just as we got in sight of the house poor Miss Wilburn was so worn out
-with grief and anxiety that she sat down on the big stump and laughed
-and cried as hard as she could. Mother saw her from the window and she
-and mammy ran down to where we were to see what it was all about. She
-patted Miss Wilburn on the back and on the head and said, "poor dear,"
-while mammy said she would run right back to the house and brew her
-some strong tea, which was splendid when a body was distressed about a
-man.
-
-"There, dear, talk to us about him," mother said, after the whole
-story was told, "tell us about him, for talking will do you good.
-You've been unnaturally quiet about him since you've been here!"
-
-"I was trying to find out whether or not I really loved him," Miss
-Wilburn said, after Julius and Marcella had left us and we were going
-on up the walk. "It was silly of me, for all the time I've been so
-lonesome for him that I felt as if I should scream if anybody
-suggested men or marrying to me!"
-
-"Yes, you pore lamb," mammy said, walking on fast to make the tea,
-"you loves him, you shore do. I knows them symptoms!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-
-I think if the person which remarked, "It is not always May," had said
-April he would have come nearer hitting it, for I think it is the most
-beautiful time of all. There's something in the very feelings at this
-time of the year that makes you want to write pretty things, whether
-you know what you want to say or not. So I have got out my diary and
-dusted it off, it being laid away in the drawer ever since last fall,
-when I told about me getting Miss Wilburn's affairs so mixed up
-because there hasn't been anything happening.
-
-One time not long ago I did get out my diary, for I got very excited
-over the news that a _widow_ was here, and I sharpened seventeen
-pencils so as to be ready for her. But she had the misfortune to
-marry, before I could get introduced to her, a man from her same city
-which had got on the train and followed her down here. She was a
-lovely, high-heeled, fluffy-petticoated kind of a widow and I could
-have written _chapters_ out of her I know; because all the time she
-was down here the ladies' sewing circle met three times a week and
-talked so that father said he heard they had to pass around potash
-tablets instead of refreshments for the sake of their sore throats.
-
-Mammy Lou made fun of me when I told her how disappointed I was over
-not getting to meet such a pretty lady and write her experiences.
-
-"Looks like you'd a knew better than to expect a widow to waste time
-a-cou'tin'," she told me with that proud look coming over her face
-that always does when she begins to brag on herself. "_They_ don't
-cou't; they marries! Thar ain't nobody able to dispute with _me_ over
-the ways o' widows, for ain't I done been _six_ of them _myself_?"
-
-This ain't exactly so, it's just five, for she never has got that
-divorce from Bill Williams yet; and she says now that she's going to
-spend the money that the divorce would cost in beautifying herself so
-she can marry again. She says she wants to buy her a stylish set of
-bangs and a pair of kid gloves to go with them, then she is going to
-let the next man make her a present of the divorce for a bridal gift.
-
-"And you needn't be settin' it down in that little dairy book o'
-yourn, neither, for your gran'chillen to be makin' spo't o' _me_ about
-after I'm done dead an' gone."
-
-I told her it was diary, not dairy, but she wouldn't listen to me.
-
-"Go 'long with that stuck-up talk," she told me, "ain't I been knowin'
-about dairies all my life? An' I never even heered tell of a _di_-ry
-till I learned to my sorrow of that pesky little book that's always
-gettin' lost and me havin' to find it." And I couldn't blame her very
-much for this, me being a great hand myself to get words mixed up in
-my childhood, especially such words as epistle and apostle. I always
-thought that ignorant people said "epistle" and smart ones "apostle."
-
-But as I was saying, a sweetheart is the proper thing to get in the
-spring if you _can_ get one; but if you're too little for such a thing
-a kindred spirit is the next best thing a girl can have. A kindred
-spirit is a girl you lay awake till twelve o'clock of a night telling
-secrets to. Of course _men_ never tell secrets, but they often need a
-kindred spirit, that is, a close friend, especially when they get so
-sick they think they're about to die they want the friend to run quick
-to their private office and burn up some letters in their desk that it
-wouldn't be healthy for them to let their wife know about, even if
-they were dead. So it is a convenient thing to have, male or female.
-
-The first night I laid awake with mine I told her all about stuffing
-my insteps to make them look aristocratic and kissing Lord Byron's
-picture good night every night, which I _never_ would have done in
-the daylight. At night things just seem to tell _themselves_, although
-you are very sorry for it the next day. Men mostly propose at night; I
-guess one excuse is that the girls form such beautiful optical
-illusions under a pink lamp shade.
-
-Well, I told her all I knew and she told me the story of her life,
-which is as follows: Her name is Jean Everett, her mother's name is
-Mrs. Everett and her young lady aunt is named Miss Merle Arnold on her
-mother's side. They are down here to spend the summer and are boarding
-close to our house. There is another boarder in the house for the
-summer which is named Mr. St. John, and Jean says if they had named
-him Angel instead of just Saint it wouldn't be any too good for him.
-And, if I do say it myself, he is as beautiful as a mermaid. Mammy Lou
-says he's got a "consumpted look," but to other people it is the
-height of poetry.
-
-Jean is so full of poetical thoughts herself that her stomach is very
-much upset and nothing but chocolate candy will agree with her. She
-has promised the next time she stays all night with me she will tell
-me the one great secret of her life (as if I hadn't guessed it the
-minute she called Mr. St. John's name.) She hasn't got much appetite
-and the smell of honeysuckle fills her with strange longings. She says
-she either wants to write a great book or live in a marble palace or
-marry a duke, she can't tell exactly which. But the poor girl is
-cruelly misunderstood by her family, because her mother is giving her
-rhubarb to break it out on her.
-
-Jean came over early this morning and said she just had to talk to
-somebody about how spiritual Mr. St. John looked last night with his
-fair hair and white vest on.
-
-"He looked just like a _lily_, Ann," she said, with almost tears in
-her eyes, and me remembering Doctor Gordon didn't laugh at her. Then,
-before I could comfort her, she had dropped down by the iris bed and
-was telling me the one great secret of her life, without waiting to
-stay all night and tell it in the moonlight.
-
-"_Love_ him," she said, gathering up a handful of the purple irises,
-"love _him_? I'd _cook_ for that man."
-
-I didn't hardly know what to say in answer to this secret, which
-wasn't much of a secret to me; but she didn't wait for me to say
-anything for she went on telling me what big pearl buttons the white
-vest had on it and how Mr. St. John said "i-ther and ni-ther," and how
-broken her heart was. She said she was the most sinful girl on earth,
-for she believed Mr. St. John was about to get struck on her Aunt
-Merle, and here she was winning him away from her!
-
-I asked her if he had ever said anything about loving her and she said
-why, no; no well-behaved girl would let a man say such a thing to her
-until they had been acquainted at least a month, and they hadn't been
-knowing each other but twenty-two days. I then asked her if he had
-made any sign that he would like to say things to her when the month
-was out, but she said that was just where the trouble came in. She
-_knew_ she could win his love if she once got a _chance_ at him; but
-no matter how early she got up of a morning to go and sit with him on
-the porch before breakfast, which was a habit of his, he would just
-ask her how far along she was in geography and if she didn't think
-algebra was easier than arithmetic, and such insulting questions as
-that. Then he would pace up and down the floor until her Aunt Merle
-came out of the front door, acting like a _caged bridegroom_! She
-said, oh, it would put her in her grave if she didn't get her mind off
-of it for a little while! Then she asked me if we were going to have
-strawberries for dinner and said she would run over and ask her mother
-if she could stay.
-
-This morning Jean asked me if I remembered what Hamlet in Shakespeare
-said about _words_. I told her I had just got as far as _The Merchant
-of Venice_ and was getting ready to start on Hamlet when Miss Wilburn
-left. She said well, he remarked "words, words, words," but he didn't
-know what he was talking about. She said he meant that there wasn't
-anything in mere words, but he was badly fooled, for there was a heap
-in them.
-
-I told her yes, there was something in words, for I had read of a
-beautiful Irish poet once that just couldn't think of a word that he
-wanted to finish up a song with. He studied over it for about three
-months, when all of a sudden one day his carriage upset and bumped his
-head so hard that he thought of it.
-
-Jean said that was a _beautiful_ story and she would be willing to
-have her head bumped once for _every_ word, if she could just write
-poetry that would touch one cold heart that she knew of.
-
-I said well, how on earth did all this talk about words come up, and
-she told me that all her future happiness depended upon the meaning
-of just one word. Then she went on to tell me that this morning she
-had seen her Aunt Merle on the porch talking to Mr. St. John; so she
-slipped around to the end of the porch like I showed her how to do
-when there was anything interesting going on; and she had heard him
-tell Miss Merle that she mustn't "condemn the precipitation, but
-rather consider how he _could_ do otherwise." Then he had made use of
-a word that she never heard of before in her life. It was
-_pro-pin-qui-ty_; and Miss Merle's face had turned as red as tomatoes
-when he said it. She said if it was a love word she was ready to
-commit suicide of a broken heart, but if it was a _hateful_ word and
-they were quarreling, then there was great hopes for her. We looked it
-up, but the dictionary man didn't explain it hardly a bit. Finally I
-told Jean as it was spelled so much like _In-i-qui-ty_ maybe they
-meant the same thing, and she went home feeling much easier in her
-mind.
-
-I'm in such a writable mood to-night that I don't know what to begin
-on, and I reckon I'll know less about where to stop. Mammy Lou started
-us at it, for her mind never runs on a thing except loving and
-marrying. She asked me early this morning if we wasn't going to try
-our fortunes to-day by looking down into a well at noon, this being
-May Day. Me, being of an affectionate nature, of course liked the
-idea, so I ran right over to tell Jean, who was simply carried away.
-She said it would be such a relief to her to see the face of her
-beloved reflected in the well; but I told her that to see _any_ face
-would mean that she was going to get a husband, which a girl ought to
-be thankful for, and not get her heart set on any particular one.
-While we were planning about it Miss Merle came in and asked what it
-was. When we told her she smiled and asked if she was too old and
-grown-up to join in the game, but I told her no indeed, she didn't act
-at all like a grown person. I really think Miss Merle is very
-fascinating. Even her name, Merle, sounds soft and sweet to me, like
-a right fresh marshmallow.
-
-Now, naturally anybody would be excited to think that they were going
-to see their husband's face at twelve o'clock in the bottom of a well,
-and it seemed to us that the time never would come. There is a very
-old well down in our pasture close by the fence which ain't covered
-over, and a lot of lilac bushes right around it in bloom, so you
-couldn't well pick a prettier spot for your future husband's face.
-
-Mammy Lou said we better all wear white sunbonnets, because they
-become you so, and Miss Merle looked awful pretty in hers, with her
-dark, curly hair.
-
-I don't know how the news that we were going to do such a thing ever
-got spread, for we didn't tell hardly a soul--just mother and mammy
-and Mrs. Everett and the lady they board with and her married
-daughter, which all promised that they wouldn't ever tell, but
-somebody else found out about it, as you shall see.
-
-We collected at the pasture gate at exactly a quarter to twelve and
-the minute the first whistle blew we raced to the well, for we were
-all anxious to see our husband if he was there. They said for me to go
-first as it was my well, but I said no, they must go first, because
-they were company, but Miss Merle said for me to look first, then she
-and Jean would look at the same time, as their husbands wouldn't mind
-reflecting together, being that they were kin.
-
-My heart was beating so that I was about to smother, but I pulled my
-bonnet down low over my eyes to shut out any view except what was in
-the well, like mammy told us to do, and leaned 'way over and looked.
-
-Now, up to this time, my diary, whenever I have mentioned Sir Reginald
-I was kinder half joking, and never really thought he would come to
-pass, as so many things in this life don't; but now I believe it's
-_so_. While I couldn't make out his face very well and don't know
-whether his eyes are blue or brown, and his nose Roman or not, still
-there was something glittering and shining in that well which I firmly
-believe was meant to be Sir Reginald de Beverley and his _coat of
-mail_!
-
-They were punching me and saying, "Ann, do you see anything?" till I
-couldn't tell whether he smiled at me or not; but I remembered my
-manners even on such a critical occasion, so I got up and let them
-look.
-
-They commenced pulling down their bonnets like I did and leaned over
-the well. I was on the other side, facing the lilac bushes--and in
-less time than it takes me to write it, me being in a hurry and my
-pencil short, there was something happening that made me feel like I
-was in a fairy tale. I saw those lilac bushes move and the next thing
-I knew there was Mr. St. John. Not in a white vest, it's true, but
-looking beautiful enough, even in the daylight. He motioned to me not
-either to speak or move, though I couldn't have done either one, being
-almost paralyzed between seeing him and Sir Reginald at the same
-time. He tipped up right easy and leaned over the well, opposite to
-Miss Merle.
-
-When Jean saw his image in the well she gave one overjoyed scream and
-leaned farther over to see more.
-
-"Oh, it's Mr. St. John," she called out to her Aunt Merle, her voice
-sounding very deep and hollow, but joyful. "It's _Mr._ St. John!
-_He's_ going to be my future husband!"
-
-He and Miss Merle were about to kill themselves laughing, for Miss
-Merle had seen him from the first; but when Jean looked up and saw him
-he looked at her so sweet that you felt like you could forgive him
-anything he was to do, even the "i-ther and ni-ther."
-
-"I'd like to accommodate you, Jean," he said, laughing and catching
-her hand with an affectionate look, although he is usually very timid
-and dignified, "but the fact is--may I tell, Merle?" And the way _he_
-said "Merle" sounded like a whole _box_ of marshmallows.
-
-Miss Merle smiled at him and then he told Jean if she would every
-_bit_ as soon have it that way, he would be her uncle instead of her
-future husband.
-
-I was so afraid that she would faint or die right there in the pasture
-that I told them I heard mother calling me and ran as hard as I could
-tear.
-
-She came over this afternoon to tell me all about it and was feeling
-strong enough to eat a small basket of wild goose plums.
-
-"Oh, it was a terrible shock at first," she said, stopping long enough
-to spit out a seed, "but the _minute_ he said _uncle_ my love changed.
-Why, Ann, an uncle is an _old_ person, almost like a grandpa! Anyway,
-they've promised that I shall be in the wedding, dressed in a pair of
-beautiful white silk stockings."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-
-It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house,
-especially if he's at the _watchable_ age, although he's such a
-darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before
-you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and
-run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great
-pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great
-handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch
-for a minute by himself. And at times he won't be satisfied with
-anything on earth unless you turn up the mattress and let him beat on
-the bed-springs, which I consider a smart idea and think Cousin Eunice
-ought to write out and send to a magazine under the head of "Hints
-for Tired Mothers." But I say it again, there don't any of us begrudge
-him these many little ways, although it's hard to be literary with
-them; for when he smiles and "pat-a-cakes" and says "Ah! ah!" you
-don't care if you never write another line.
-
-Mother made Cousin Eunice turn over the raising of him to her the very
-day she got here, for everybody knows, my diary, how a lady that's
-ever raised a baby feels toward a lady that's just owned one a few
-months.
-
-"No _flannel_ on this precious child!" mother almost screamed the
-minute we got him off the train and started to drive home. "Why, it's
-positively flying in the face of Providence to leave his band off this
-early!" And mother looked at Cousin Eunice like she had done it
-a-purpose.
-
-"Oh, Aunt Mary, please don't," poor Cousin Eunice said like she was
-about to cry. "For the last eleven months there has been scarcely a
-thing discussed in my presence but _belly-bands_!" (There weren't any
-men around.) "It seems if a woman ever has one baby her thoughts never
-travel away from flannel bands afterward!"
-
-"But pneumonia! Cholera infantum! Teething!" Mother kept on, hugging
-Waterloo close.
-
-"That's what _twenty-three_ of my neighbors tell me," Cousin Eunice
-answered, "then nineteen others say it's cruel to keep him all swathed
-up in this hot weather, while eleven said to leave it off until his
-second summer, and fifteen said for me to----"
-
-"What does Doctor Gordon say?" mother asked, to change the subject off
-of the neighbors.
-
-"He said, '_Damn those old women!_'" Cousin Eunice told her, which
-made her jump, although it looks like she has lived with father long
-enough not to.
-
-Right after dinner they started up the talk again. Should Waterloo be
-banded or disbanded? They hadn't talked long when Mammy Lou came into
-the room holding something under her apron. She looked kinder mad and
-dignified at mother and Cousin Eunice because they hadn't asked her
-for _her_ say-so about bands.
-
-"If it's entirely respectable for me to speak before I'm spoke to,"
-she commenced, her voice very proud and haughty, "I'd like for you all
-to pay _me_ some mind. There's _two_ subject's I'm well qualified to
-speak about and one is babies. Ain't I done raised a bushel basket
-full o' little niggers, let alone that one beautiful little white
-angel that's the peartest and sweetest of any in the state?"
-
-Which made me feel very much embarrassed with modestness.
-
-"We all know that you made a good job of Ann," Cousin Eunice said very
-pleasantly just to pacify her. "What would you suggest about little
-Rufus?"
-
-"_These!_" Mammy Lou said, drawing her hand out from her apron like a
-man on the stage dressed in velvet does his sword and we saw a string
-of speckled beans.
-
-"Job's Tears," mammy told the company. "Ther ain't no need to worry
-about bands when you've got _these_! Ther nuvver has been a child that
-cut teeth hard from Adam on down if his ma put a string of these
-aroun' his neck----"
-
-Cousin Eunice was beginning to say something nice when father spoke up
-and asked mammy who it was that put them around Adam's neck, which
-made her mad.
-
-"Poke all the fun you want to," she said, "but the time _will_ come
-that you-all 'ull be thankful to me for savin' these for Mr. Rufe's
-baby, or I'm a blue-gum nigger!"
-
-Lots of times I take Waterloo over to make Jean a visit, which is easy
-on everybody, for the folks over there love babies so that they
-relieve me of his weight the minute I get there and leave me and Jean
-free to do whatever we want to. She is teaching me what she calls
-"artistic handwriting" now, using an actress' signature for a copy. It
-consists of some very large letters and some very small ones, like the
-charts in an eye-doctor's office that he uses to see if you're old
-enough to wear spectacles.
-
-Cousin Eunice has time now with so many folks to help tend to Waterloo
-to slip off every morning and go to a quiet place down in the yard
-with her paper and pencil and compose on a book she's trying to write.
-Before she was ever married she wanted to write a book, and if you
-once get _that_ idea into your head even marrying won't knock it out.
-
-Cousin Eunice says I'm such a kindred spirit that I don't bother her
-when I go along too, but she has a dreadful time at her own house
-trying to write. She don't more than get her soul full of beautiful
-thoughts about tall, pale men and long-stemmed roses and other things
-like that before a neighbor drops in and talks for three hours about
-the lady around the corner's husband staying out so late at night and
-what her servants use to scrub the kitchen sink. I told her I knew one
-lady that hated so for folks to drop in that she unscrewed the front
-doorbell, so she couldn't hear them ring, but she got paid back for it
-next day by missing the visit of a rich relation.
-
-
-Rufe and Cousin Eunice may live to be thankful for the string of Job's
-Tears, but I reckon to-night Miss Merle and Mr. St. John wish that Job
-never shed a tear in the shape of a bean, for they were what a grown
-person would call "the indirect cause" of a quarrel between them. It's
-queer that such a little thing as Waterloo should be picked out by
-Fate to break up a loving couple, but he did; although I ain't saying
-that it was _altogether_ his fault.
-
-This afternoon I took him over to Jean's and we were having a lovely
-time out on their front porch, enjoying stories of her former
-sweethearts and a bottle of stuffed olives. She told me about one she
-had last winter that she was deeply attached to. She would see him at
-a big library in the city where she loves to read every afternoon. She
-saw him there one time and got to admiring him so much that she would
-go up there every afternoon at the time she knew he would be there and
-get a book and sit opposite him, making like she was reading, but
-really feasting her eyes on his lovely hair and scholarly looking
-finger-nails.
-
-"I never got acquainted with him, so never learned his name," she told
-me, jabbing her hat-pin deep down into the olive bottle, like little
-Jack Horner, "but he was always reading about 'The Origin of the Aryan
-Family,' so I'm sure he was a young Mr. Aryan."
-
-I told her I certainly had heard the Aryan family spoken of, I
-couldn't remember where, but she said oh, yes, she knew it was a swell
-family and that I must have read about it in the pink sheet of the
-Sunday paper.
-
-Then she said she had a souvenir of him, and, as I'm crazy about
-souvenirs, I begged her to go and get it, hoping very much that it was
-a miniature on ivory set in diamonds.
-
-"What is it?" I kept asking her, as she was trying to get her legs
-untangled out of her petticoats to get up and go after it; we were
-sitting flat down on the floor, which sometimes tangles your heels
-dreadfully. Finally she got up, tearing a piece of trimming out, which
-she did up in a little ball and threw away, so her mother would lay it
-on the washerwoman when she saw the tear.
-
-"_Ashes_;" she told me, kinder whispery, after she had reached the
-front door, for she was afraid somebody would hear; but it gave me a
-terrible feeling and I wondered how she got them away from his
-relations and whether she had to go to the graveyard in the middle of
-the night to do it or not. I comforted myself with the thought that
-they would be in a prettily ornamented urn, even if they were ashes,
-for I had read about urns in Roman history; but shucks! when she got
-back it wasn't a thing but a pink chewing-gum wrapper full of cigar
-ashes that he had thrown away one day right in front of her as they
-were going up the steps to the library.
-
-Before I had time to tell her how disappointed I was there came a
-picture-taking man up the front walk and asked us to let him take
-Waterloo's picture for some post-cards. If you were pleased you could
-buy them and if you weren't you didn't have to. But he knew of course
-there wouldn't any lady be hardhearted enough not to buy a picture of
-her own baby.
-
-Nothing could have delighted us more, unless the man had said take
-_our_ pictures; and Jean remarked that Waterloo ought to be fixed up
-funny to correspond with the string of beads around his neck. She ran
-and got a pair of overalls that belonged to the lady she boards with's
-little boy and we stuffed Waterloo in. He looked too cute for anything
-and we was just settling him down good for the picture when Jean
-spoke up again and said oh, wasn't it a pity that he didn't have any
-hair on his head, as hair showed up so well in a picture. I told her
-it was aristocratic not to have hair when you're a baby, on your head.
-She said shucks! how could anything connected with a baby be
-aristocratic? This made me mad and I told her maybe she didn't know
-what it was to be aristocratic. She said she did, too; it was
-aristocratic to have a wide front porch to your house and to eat
-sweetbreads when you were dining in a hotel. I was thinking up
-something else to say when the picture-taking man said hurry up. There
-is a great deal more to this, but it is so late that I'm going to
-leave the rest for to-morrow night. Anyhow maybe my grandchildren will
-be more interested to go on and read, for magazine writers always chop
-their stories off at the most particular spot, when they are going to
-be continued, just where you are holding your breath, so as to make
-you buy the next number of the magazine.
-
-
-Well, in just a minute after we were talking about the hair Jean said
-she knew the _very_ thing! Her Aunt Merle was up on the far back porch
-drying her hair that she had just finished washing, and had left her
-rat lying on her bureau. She had seen it there when she went to get
-the ashes of Mr. Aryan. She said it was a lovely rat, which cost five
-dollars, all covered with long brown hair; and she said it was just
-the thing to set off Waterloo's bald head fine. So she ran and got it
-and we fixed it on. He looked exactly like a South Sea Islander which
-you see in the side show of an exposition by paying twenty-five cents
-extra. (An exposition is a large place which makes your feet nearly
-kill you.) But the picture-man said he looked mighty cute and snapped
-him in several splendid positions.
-
-Now, if Mr. St. John had just stayed where he belonged this would be
-the end of the story and I could go on to bed to-night, without having
-to sit up by myself writing till the clocks strike eleven, which is a
-lonesome hour when everybody else is in bed.
-
-But Mr. St. John didn't stay away; and, as all the bad things that
-happen are laid on Fate, I reckon she was the one that put it into his
-head to walk up those front steps and on to that porch before we
-noticed him, for we were trying our best to get Waterloo back into
-citizen's clothes.
-
-He stopped to see what it was we were scrambling over, and when he saw
-that it was alive he threw up his nice white hands and remarked
-"Heavens!" which is the elegant thing to say when you're surprised,
-although father always says, "Jumping Jerusalem!"
-
-"What is the thing?" he asked, after he had looked again. Jean told
-him why it was just the lady over at our house's little baby dressed
-up. Then he asked what that horrible woolly growth on his head was,
-which tickled Jean mightily. Then, just for the fun of seeing what he
-_would_ say when he was very much surprised, she jerked it off and
-held it up, like the executioner did Mary, Queen of Scot's head, which
-gives me a crinkly pain up and down my back even to read about. The
-rat was just pinned together and set up on Waterloo's little noggin,
-so Jean jerked it off and explained to Mr. St. John that it was her
-Aunt Merle's rat. _I_ always knew it wasn't any good idea to talk
-about such things before a man that was a person's lover; but I
-thought Jean had had more experience in such things than I had and it
-wasn't my place to interrupt her.
-
-I am sure Mr. St. John felt like saying "Jumping Jerusalem" when Jean
-told him that the woolly growth was the rat of his beloved. If I was
-writing a novel I'd say that he "recoiled with horror," that is, he
-jumped back quickly, like he didn't want it to bite him, and sat
-down.
-
-"_Imagine!_" he kept saying to himself like he was dazed; "imagine a
-man _touching_ the thing! _Kissing_ the thing!"
-
-I thought, of course, he was talking about Waterloo, and was ready to
-speak up and say, "I thank you, Mr. St. John, my little cousin is not
-to be called a '_thing_,'" but Jean spoke first.
-
-"What would you want to kiss _this_ for?" she asked him. "'Tain't any
-harm to kiss in the _mouth_ after you're engaged, is it?"
-
-We might have been standing there asking him such questions as that
-till daylight this morning for all the answers we got out of him, but
-while he sat looking at us and we were trying to squirm Waterloo's
-little fat legs out of the overalls and him kicking and crying, Miss
-Merle walked out on the porch. She saw Mr. St. John first, as you
-would naturally expect an engaged girl to do, and started toward him,
-but just then she saw us and stopped.
-
-"Why, what on earth are you children doing with my rat down here?"
-she asked, not looking a bit ashamed.
-
-We told her what we had been doing with it and she just laughed and
-said well, it was too hot to wear the thing on such a day anyway,
-although she had looked for it high and low.
-
-All the time we were talking Mr. St. John looked at her in the most
-amazed way, like he expected to see her appear looking like a Mexican
-dog, but was greatly surprised to see her with such a nice lot of
-home-made hair. If he had had any sense he would admire her all the
-more for not telling a story about that rat; for I've seen a thousand
-young ladies in my life that wouldn't have owned up to it for a
-hundred dollars, but would have made their little niece out a story
-and then boxed her ears in private. I hope when I get grown I won't be
-a _liarable_ young lady, although it does seem like they're twice as
-quick to get married as an honest one.
-
-He didn't act with good sense, though, for they soon got to talking
-and we could hear what they said (although we were out of sight) for
-they were high-toned remarks.
-
-He said he _hated_ shams, and she said well, that wasn't any sham for
-every blowsy-headed girl wears them nowadays and everybody knows it,
-even the poets and novel-writers that always make their heroines so
-fuzzy-headed. Then she called him a prig and he said something back at
-her and she gave him back the ring, which was a brave thing to do, it
-being a grand diamond one with Mizpath marked in it.
-
-
-Of course the next thing that happens after an engagement is broken is
-for it to get mended again. All day we have hung around Miss Merle to
-see just when she gets the ring back again, but up to a late hour
-to-night, as the newspapers say about the election returns, there was
-nothing doing. Oh, it does seem a pity that they would let the news go
-down to their children or be put on their tombstones that their lives
-were blighted on account of a rat!
-
-I've neglected you, my diary, for the last few days because my mind
-has been on other things. It rained all the next day after I wrote
-last and I couldn't go over to Jean's, which put me out greatly. I
-finally thought about sending a note by Lares and Penates and paid
-them in chicken livers, me being so uneasy in my mind that I didn't
-have any appetite for them, and knowing that they loved them enough to
-fight over them any time.
-
-I told Jean in the note to fix some kind of signal like Paul Revere to
-let me know the minute the ring got back to Miss Merle, for I was
-deeply worried, me and Waterloo and Jean being to blame for it. Then,
-too, it is dangerous for an engagement ring to stay returned too long
-for it might get given to another girl.
-
-Jean was delighted with my note and said she would certainly hang a
-lantern in the garret only she never could undo the chimney of a
-lantern to light it, and never saw a lady person that could; but it
-was a romantic idea. So she thought hanging a white towel in the
-window that faces our house for a signal would do very well, and I
-could know by that if it kept on raining and I couldn't get over
-there.
-
-Well, I was so interested that I hardly moved from that side of the
-house all day, until it got so dark that I couldn't see the house,
-much less a towel. So I went sorrowfully to bed. The next morning I
-was delighted to see that I was going to get rewarded for my watching,
-for _long_ before breakfast I discovered a white thing, and it was
-waving from Mr. St. John's window, which made it all the surer in my
-mind.
-
-Although it was cakes and maple syrup I didn't waste much time over
-breakfast, but grabbed my hat and started for Jean's.
-
-Miss Merle was on the front porch and I noticed Mr. St. John just
-inside the hall, looking like he would like to come out, but was
-waiting for her to give him lief. She looked up at me quick.
-
-"Why, Ann," she said, "what are you in such a big hurry about?"
-
-I've often noticed, my diary, that when people are in a hurry and
-can't think of anything else to tell they tell the _truth_, although
-they don't intend to. It was that way with me.
-
-"Oh, I'm _so_ glad you and Mr. St. John have made up!" I told her,
-fanning hard with my hat, for I was all out of breath.
-
-She looked very strange and asked me, "What?" and so I told her over
-again. Just then Mr. St. John came out and asked who was that talking
-about him behind his back. He looked pitiful, although he tried to
-look pleasant, too.
-
-Jean heard me talking and came running down the stairs just in time to
-hear me telling it over again to Miss Merle.
-
-"Why, there ain't a _sign_ of a towel hanging out the window," she
-told me, looking very much surprised and me greatly mortified. "You
-must have dreamed it!"
-
-Miss Merle asked her then what she was talking about and it was their
-turn to look surprised when she told them.
-
-I told them I had felt awfully bad about the rat, because me and
-Waterloo was partly responsible, and they kinder smiled. But I
-couldn't let them think that I had _made_ up the towel story, so I
-told them if they would come around on the side that faces our house
-I'd show them. Mr. St. John and Miss Merle looked at each other very
-peculiar and he said:
-
-"It's a shame to disappoint the children!" which she didn't make any
-answer to, but she looked _tolerable_ agreeable. Then I begged them to
-come on around to Mr. St. John's window and I could show them I wasn't
-any story.
-
-"My window!" he said, looking surprised; then his face turned red.
-"Why, it must have been my er--_shirt_ I hung there last night to dry
-after I was out in that shower!"
-
-We couldn't help from laughing, all of us; but he laughs like the
-corners of his mouth ain't used to it. That is one bad thing about a
-dignified man--they're always afraid to let their mouth muscles
-stretch.
-
-Miss Merle caught me and Jean by the hand with a smile and said let's
-go and see what that signal looked like that brought Ann over in such
-a hurry. "A shirt is a highly proper thing to discuss--since Thomas
-Hood," she said as we started down the steps.
-
-"Pray don't," he said, the corners of his mouth wrinkling again, but
-his face just covered with red. "I'll be the happiest man on earth,
-Merle, if you'll just forgive me for my asininity; but--_do_ come
-back!---- For it's an _undershirt_!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-
-"Come on in, the egg-nog's fine," Rufe called out to us as we came up
-the walk to the side gate this morning, a beautiful Christmas morning,
-after a long tramp down through the wood lot and up the ravine.
-
-"Come on out, the ozone's finer," Cousin Eunice sang back at him; then
-stopped still, leaned against the gate-post and looked up at the
-mistletoe hanging in the trees all about.
-
-"You can get ozone three hundred and sixty-five days in the year,
-egg-nog but one!" he hollered again, but I saw him set his glass down
-and start to swing Waterloo up on his shoulder. No matter how long
-they have been married you can always find Rufe wanting to be where
-Cousin Eunice is, and vice versa.
-
-Long ago anybody reading in my diary would have seen that mother is
-the kind of woman who loves to mother anything that needs it, from a
-little chicken with the gapes to a college professor out in a storm
-without his rubbers; and the latest notion she has taken up is to see
-that Miss Martha Claxton, one of the teachers in a girls' school that
-has been opened up near here, shall not get homesick during the
-week-ends. We all like her, Mammy Lou even saving the top of the
-churning every Friday to make cottage cheese for her; and Cousin
-Eunice said she knew she was a kindred spirit as soon as she said she
-could eat a bottle of olives at one sitting and _loved_ Baby Stuart's
-picture. So we invited her to go walking with us this morning and
-Cousin Eunice told her all about her courting in the ravine.
-
-_I_ also knew about her _peculiarity_, which Cousin Eunice didn't; but
-I didn't like to mention it, for Miss Claxton had smashed her
-eye-glasses all to pieces yesterday and was wearing an embroidered
-waist and a string of coral, so instead of looking intellectual, as
-she usually does, she looked just like other girls. But the men of our
-family all laugh at her behind her back and call her "The Knocker,"
-because she carries a hammer with her on all her rambles instead of a
-poetry book, and knocks the very jiblets out of little rocks to see if
-they've got any fossils on their insides. In other words, she is a
-geologist. A person ought not to blame her though until she has had
-time to explain to them that her father was professor of it and had a
-chair in a college when she was born. So he taught her all about rocky
-subjects when she was little, and she's crazy about it. Still, I would
-rather be with a person that is crazy about geology than one that
-isn't crazy at all. I hate _medium_ people. But, as I have said, we
-are all very fond of her, although she has never done anything since
-I've known her that would be worth writing about in this book, not
-having any lover; so it has been lying on the shelf all covered with
-dust ever since Jean left. Sometimes I think I'll never find another
-Jean!
-
-To get back to my subject, though, this morning _was_ lovely--cool
-enough to keep your hair in curl (if you were a grown lady) and warm
-enough to make your cheeks pink. Cousin Eunice said she _couldn't_ go
-back into the house while the sunshine was so golden, so we leaned our
-elbows on the fence and Miss Claxton examined a handful of pebbles she
-had picked up on our walk. Pretty soon Rufe came out with Waterloo on
-his shoulder and in his hands a horse that can walk on wheels and a
-mule that can wag his head, ears, legs and tail and say, "queek,
-queek," all at the same time.
-
-"Oh, Rufe, isn't it lovely?" Cousin Eunice said, looking away toward
-the hills and sighing that half-sad sigh that rises in you when you
-see something beautiful and can't eat it nor drink it nor _squeeze_
-it.
-
-"Isn't what lovely, your complexion?" he answered, just to tease her,
-for Rufe loves the outdoors as much as any of us, and if Waterloo
-takes after his mother and father both, he will never sleep in
-anything more civilized than a wigwam.
-
-"Don't joke," she said. "It's too beautiful--and too fleeting! Just
-think, in another week we'll be back, dwelling with the rest of the
-fools amid the tall buildings!"
-
-"It is everything you say," he answered soberly, looking in the
-direction she pointed, and he seemed to have that happy, hurting
-feeling that comes to you when you look at Lord Byron's picture, or
-smell lilies-of-the-valley.
-
-"Don't you feel light on a morning like this?" Cousin Eunice said
-again, still looking at the hills. "Couldn't you do anything?"
-
-"Anything!" he echoed. "Even push my paper to the hundred thousand
-mark--or carry a message to Garcia."
-
-"Especially the message to Garcia! Now _couldn't_ you?" she said with
-a bright smile. "I could do that myself, without even mussing up my
-white linen blouse!"
-
-Miss Claxton looked up at them with a puzzled look, and Rufe and
-Cousin Eunice unhitched hands.
-
-"Miss Claxton," Rufe began with a half-teasing twinkle in his eyes (I
-had heard father telling him a while ago about Miss Claxton being a
-knocker), "this little affair about the message to Garcia happened a
-bit this side of the Eocene age, so maybe you haven't bothered your
-head about it. I might explain that----"
-
-"Nobody asked you to, sir," she said, with such a rainbow of a smile
-at him that I was surprised. If she could smile like that at a married
-man what would she do at a single one? "I know a lot more things than
-I look to--with my glasses on! That carrying the message to Garcia was
-a brave thing to do, even aside from the risks. It is heroic to do the
-thing at hand. I'm trying to learn that lesson myself. I'm being a
-schoolmarm and wearing glasses to look like one, instead of following
-my natural bent in the scientific field," she wound up, still smiling.
-
-"What's your ambition?" Cousin Eunice said, looking at her
-wonderingly.
-
-"Knowing what's to be known about Primitive Man," Miss Claxton
-answered. "He's the only man I ever cared a copper cent about!"
-
-"Mine's writing a book that will make me famous overnight, I don't
-want to wait to awake some morning and find myself so," Cousin Eunice
-said, stooping over to set Waterloo's horse up on his wheels, for he
-would come unfixed every time Waterloo would yank him over a gravel;
-and all the time we were talking he kept up a chorus of "Fick horte!
-Fick horte!"
-
-Rufe said his ambition was never to see an editor's paste-pot again,
-and he was turning to me to ask what mine is when the conversation was
-interrupted. I was glad that it was, for I should hate to tell them
-just what mine is. Somehow it is mostly about Sir Reginald de
-Beverley, and I'm old enough now to know that he may not be an English
-lord after all and dress in a coat of mail. He may be just a plain
-young doctor or lawyer, and we'll have to live in a cottage (only
-excuse me from a flat, I wouldn't live in a flat with Lord Byron) and
-maybe we'll just have chicken on Sunday. But as long as he has brown
-eyes and broad shoulders and lovely teeth I shall manage to do with
-crackers and peanut butter through the week. A woman will do
-_anything_ for the man she loves.
-
-But I didn't have to tell them all this, for just then we heard the
-gate click and saw our friend, Mr. Gayle, coming up the walk.
-
-"There comes old Zephyr," Rufe said with a laugh. "It was the biggest
-lie on earth to name him Gayle. Even Breeze would have been an
-exaggeration."
-
-"He's awfully smart," I told Rufe, for I hate to have my friends
-laughed at. "I know you and Julius joke about him on account of his
-gentle ways and broad-brimmed hats! Father says it's better to have
-something _under_ your hat than to have so much style in its looks!"
-
-"Well, he has something under his hat," Cousin Eunice said, "and hat
-enough to cover twice as much. But I think those old-timey things are
-becoming to him!"
-
-"What is the subject about which he knows so much?" Miss Claxton
-asked, following him with her eyes until Dilsey let him in at the
-front door.
-
-"Heaven," Rufe answered her, "and hell. He writes deep psychological
-stuff for the magazines and they pay him ten cents a word for it. He
-must spend his dimes building model tenements, for he certainly
-doesn't buy new hats with them."
-
-"What does he say about Heaven and the other place?" Miss Claxton
-asked, much to our surprise, for we had thought she didn't care about
-anything but earth.
-
-"He says they're both in your own heart. The Heaven side comes up
-when you've done a decent job at your work--and loved your office boy
-as your own nephew!"
-
-"And----" Miss Claxton kept on.
-
-"And the hell part comes into the limelight when you've done anything
-mean, such as----"
-
-"Spanking your Waterloo when the telephone bell makes you
-nervous--_not_ when he's bad," Cousin Eunice said, gathering Waterloo
-up in her arms and loving him. "Him's a precious angel, and mudder's a
-nasty lady to him lots of times."
-
-"Aunt Mary is sending him out here to find us," Rufe said, as we saw
-Mr. Gayle coming out of the dining-room door. "I hope she's filled him
-so full of egg-nog that we can have some fun out of him!"
-
-He had on a Sunday-looking suit of black clothes and a soft black tie
-in honor of the day, and was really nice-looking as he came up toward
-us. And Miss Claxton threw away the last one of her pebbles, no matter
-what they had on their insides, and commenced wiping her hands
-vigorously with her handkerchief.
-
-"Thank goodness!" I thought as I watched her. "I shall go straight
-up-stairs and wipe the dust off my diary with my petticoat!"
-
-I reckon Rufe and Cousin Eunice both thought that Mr. Gayle and Miss
-Claxton had met before, for they didn't offer to introduce them, but I
-knew they hadn't, so I was the one that had to do it. I had forgotten
-how _The Ladies' Own Journal_ said it ought to be done, and I was
-kinder scared anyway; and when I get scared I always make an idiot of
-myself. So I just grabbed her right hand and his right hand and put
-them together and said, "Mr. Gayle, do shake hands with Miss Claxton!"
-
-Well, they shook hands, but the others all laughed at me. Cousin
-Eunice said she was sorry she didn't know they hadn't met before, or
-she would have introduced them. But Mr. Gayle smiled at me to keep me
-from feeling bad.
-
-"Never mind," he said, "I'm sure Ann's introduction is as good as
-anybody's. What she lacks in form she more than makes up for in
-sincerity."
-
-I thought it was nice of him to say that, but I was so embarrassed
-that I got away from them as soon as I could. I went out to the
-kitchen to see if Mammy Lou was ready to stuff the turkey. Lares and
-Penates were on the floor playing with two little automobiles that
-Julius had brought them. Mammy Lou was fixing to cut up the liver in
-the gravy.
-
-"Please don't," I began to beg her, "I'll go halves with Lares and
-Penates if you'll give it to me!"
-
-"You don't deserve nothin'," she said, trying to look at me and not
-laugh. "I seen you out thar by the side gate, aggin' 'em on! Reckon
-you're in your glory, now that you've got a pair of 'em to spy on and
-write it all out in that pesky little book!"
-
-"Oh, they ain't a pair!" I told her, slicing up the liver into three
-equal halves.
-
-"They soon will be if they listen to you!"
-
-"Never in this world! She says she never has cared for anybody but a
-person she calls 'Primitive Man!'"
-
-"Dar now! I bet he fooled her!" she said with great pleasure, for next
-to a funeral she likes a fooling, and she is always excited when she
-forgets and says "Dar now." "If he has," she kept on, "she'd better do
-the nex' best thing and marry Mr. Gayle. He's got as good raisin' as
-ary man I ever seen, although he's a little pore. But they's _some_
-things I don't like about fat husban's--they can't scratch they own
-back!"
-
-I was glad to keep her mind on marrying, for I thought I'd get a
-chance at the gizzard too, but she watched it like she watches her
-trunk-key when her son-in-law's around. I told her to go to the window
-and see what they were doing now, and she did it, poor old soul! When
-she came back the gizzard was gone, but she was so tickled that she
-didn't notice it.
-
-"They've done paired off and gone down by the big tree to knock
-mistletoe out'n the top," she told me, her face shining with grease
-and happiness. "I knowed 'twould be a match! Needn't nuvver tell no
-nigger of my experience that folks is too smart to fall in love!
-Ever'body's got a little _grain_ o' sense, no matter how deep it's
-covered with book-learnin'."
-
-"Oh, they don't have to be smart at all," I told her, talking very
-fast to divert her mind from the gravy. "Father says if the back of a
-girl's neck is pretty she can get married if she hasn't sense enough
-to count the coppers in the contribution box."
-
-"An' he tol' the truth," she said, stopping still with her hands on
-her hips like she was fixing for a long sermon. "An' furthermore, if
-she's rich she don't need to have neither. But marryin' for riches is
-like puttin' up preserves--it looks to be a heap bigger pile
-beforehan' than afterwards. An' many a man marries a rich girl
-expectin' a automobile when he don't git nothin' but a baby buggy!"
-
-
-Mr. Gayle has been coming over so early every morning since that first
-morning that he met Miss Claxton, and staying so late that I haven't
-had much time to write. I've been too busy watching. I've often heard
-Doctor Gordon say that diseases have a "period of incubation," but I
-believe that love is one disease that doesn't incubate. It just comes,
-like light does when you switch on the electricity. This morning Mr.
-Gayle came so early that Rufe went into the sitting-room and began to
-poke fun at him, as usual.
-
-"Hello, old man," he said, shaking hands with him. "I'm surely glad to
-see that it's _you_. Thought of course when the door-bell rang so soon
-after breakfast that it was an enlarged picture agent!"
-
-"No, I'm far from being an enlarged anything," the poor man said,
-wiping off the perspiration from his forehead, for he must have
-walked very fast. "In fact, I'm feeling rather 'ensmalled,' as our
-friend, Ann, might say. I have never before so realized my utter
-unworthiness!"
-
-"Bosh," Rufe said, slapping him on the shoulder in a friendly way.
-"Why, man, you're on to your job as well as anybody I ever saw. Why,
-your last article in _The Journal for the Cognoscenti_ made me give up
-every idea of the old-fashioned Heaven I'd hoped for--a place where a
-gas bill is never presented, and alarm clocks and society editors
-enter not!"
-
-"Mr. Clayborne would have been worth his weight in platinum as court
-jester to some melancholy monarch in the middle ages," Miss Claxton
-said, looking up from her crochet work which mother is teaching her
-and Cousin Eunice to do, because it has come back into style, to smile
-at Mr. Gayle.
-
-"I'm not what Ann calls 'smart'!" he said in answer to her, "but I
-remember enough history to know that the other name for jester is
-fool. I shan't stay where people call me such names!" So he got up and
-went out, which gave Cousin Eunice and Waterloo and me an excuse to go
-too. So we left the lovers alone.
-
-"Well, he's what I call a damn fool," Rufe said in a whisper as soon
-as the door was closed so they couldn't hear. "Coming over here every
-few minutes in the day, 'totin' a long face,' as mammy says, and
-hasn't got the nerve to say boo to a goose!"
-
-"Saying boo to a goose wouldn't help his suit any," Cousin Eunice
-said; "besides, well-regulated young people don't get engaged in three
-days!"
-
-"What ill-regulated young people you and I must have been!" Rufe said,
-then dodged Waterloo's ball which she threw at him, saying what a
-_story_! It was nearly two weeks before they got engaged.
-
-"I advocate getting engaged in two hours when people are as much in
-love as those two we've just left. Gayle hasn't red blood enough in
-him to stain a _chigoe's undershirt_!"
-
-
-Hasn't anything happened worth writing about until to-day, but it has
-been happening so thick ever since morning that my backbone is fairly
-aching with thrills. And I'm _tired_! Oh, mercy! But I'm going to stay
-awake to-night until I get it all written out even if I have to souse
-my head in cold water, or rouse up Waterloo.
-
-Right after breakfast this morning Mr. Gayle happened to see Cousin
-Eunice go into the parlor by herself to crochet some extra hard
-stitches, and so he went in after her and said he would like to have a
-little talk with her if she didn't mind. Dilsey had left the window up
-when she finished dusting, which I was very glad to see, for I was in
-my old place on the porch. He told her he supposed he was the
-confoundedest ass on earth, but she said oh no, she was sure he wasn't
-so bad as that! Then he plunged right into the subject and said he
-was madly in love and didn't know how to tell it. Would she please
-help him out?
-
-"Oh, don't mind that," she answered kindly. "All earnest lovers are
-awkward. The Byronic ones are liars!"
-
-He said he knew she would understand and help him with her valued
-advice!---- But, just _what_ was he to say? And _when_ was he to say
-it?
-
-She told him she thought it would be a psychological moment to-night,
-the last night of the year, and they would all be going their
-different ways on the morrow. It would be very romantic to propose
-then, say on the stroke of twelve, or just whenever he could get
-himself keyed up to it. He said oh, she was the kindest woman in the
-world. She had taken such a load off his heart! He thought it would be
-a fine idea to propose just on the stroke of midnight--somehow he
-imagined the clock striking would give him courage! Oh, he felt so
-much better for having told somebody!
-
-I felt that it would be a weight off my heart if I could tell somebody
-too, and just then I spied Rufe holding Waterloo up to see the turkeys
-down by the big chicken coop. I didn't waste a second.
-
-"Oh, Rufe, you'll be surprised!" I said, all out of breath, and he
-turned around and looked thrilled. "Mr. Gayle is _red-bloodier_ than
-you think!" Then I told him all about it. "Now aren't you sorry you
-called him a d---- fool?" I wasn't really minding about the cuss word,
-for Rufe isn't the kind of a man that says things when he's mad. He's
-as apt to say 'damn' when he's eating ice-cream as at any other time.
-
-Rufe was delighted to hear that it was going to happen while they were
-still here to see it; and we went right back to the house and planned
-to sit up with Cousin Eunice and see them after they came out of the
-parlor on the glad New Year. Julius and Marcella were coming over to
-sit up with us anyhow to watch it in, so it wouldn't be hard to do.
-
-Well, mother put enough fruit cake and what goes with it out on the
-dining-table to keep us busy as long as we could eat, but along toward
-ten o'clock we got _so_ sleepy (being just married people and me) that
-Julius said let's run the clock up two hours. Marcella said no, that
-would cause too much striking at the same time, but she said if
-_something_ didn't happen to hurry them up and put us out of our
-misery we would all be under the table in another five minutes. We
-were all so sleepy that everything we said sounded silly, so when a
-bright idea struck me it took some time to get it into their heads.
-
-"Rufe's typewriter!" I said, jumping up and down in my joy, so it
-waked them up some just to look at me. "The bell on it can go exactly
-like a clock if you slide the top thing backwards and forwards right
-fast. I've done it a million times to amuse Waterloo!"
-
-They said they knew I'd make a mess of it if I tried such a thing, but
-I told them if they took that view of what a person could do they
-never would be encouraged to try to do things. I knew I _could_ do it!
-Marcella said then for Rufe to place the typewriter close up to the
-parlor door, and they would all go out on the front porch to keep the
-lovers from hearing them laugh. So out they all filed.
-
-Well, it was an exciting moment of my life when I was sliding that
-thing backwards and forwards and thinking all sorts of heroic
-thoughts, but I gritted my teeth and didn't look up until I had got
-the twelve strokes struck. Then I went out on the front porch right
-easy and sat down by the others. Julius tucked his big coat around me
-and we all sat there a little while, laughing and shivering and
-shaking until I felt that I'd never had such a good time in my life!
-Then somebody whispered let's go in--and _then_ the unexpected
-happened.
-
-We heard a sound in the parlor close back of us and the _first_ thing
-we knew there was Mr. Gayle raising the window that opens on to the
-porch, and he and Miss Claxton came over and looked out into the
-night. They couldn't see us if we sat still, close up against the
-wall; and it seemed that none of us could budge to save our lives!
-
-It was a lovely moonlight night, clear and cold, that always reminds
-me of the night Washington Irving reached Bracebridge Hall (I just
-love it), and so he put his arm around her, Mr. Gayle I mean, not
-Washington Irving, and his voice was so clear and firm and happy that
-we all knew he had been accepted.
-
-"Bid good morrow to the New Year, my love," he said and kissed her on
-the lips a long, _long_ time. "There has been created for me this
-night not only a new year, but a new _Heaven_ and----"
-
-"And a new _earth_," she finished up softly, and they closed the
-window down.
-
-"I hope she won't take her little hammer and knock on her new earth to
-see if it has petrified wiggle tails in it," Rufe said, after we had
-filed back into the house and moved the typewriter away from the
-door. But his voice was solemn when he said it, and we all felt like
-_puppy dogs_ for being out there. And nobody said another word about
-staying up to see how they looked when they came out of the parlor.
-
-The next day everybody made like they were very much surprised at the
-way it had turned out except Mammy Lou. She looked as happy when Miss
-Claxton told us the news as if she had got herself engaged again.
-
-"You were right after all, mammy," Cousin Eunice told her. "In spite
-of all Miss Claxton's scientific knowledge she has preferred a _man_
-to a career!"
-
-"An' shows her good sense, too," mammy answered, her old brown face
-running over with smiles, like molasses in the sunshine. "A man's a
-man, I can tell you; and a career's _a mighty pore thing to warm your
-feet against_ on a cold night!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-
-April is here! Jean and April together! No wonder I haven't any sense!
-"And the rain it raineth every day," but for just a little while at a
-time, and the mud smells so good afterward that you don't care. The
-warm air comes blowing through my window so early every morning and
-puts such sad, happy thoughts into my head that I have to get up and
-wake Jean. Then we dress and go out into the side yard, where I try to
-find a calecanthus in bloom that is really sweet enough to go in front
-of Lord Byron's picture. And I try to make Jean listen while I tell
-her all my sad, happy thoughts, that's what I invited her down here
-for, but she hardly ever listens.
-
-"Isn't everything lovely?" I asked her this morning, after we had
-tiptoed through the house and out to the side porch. "And doesn't
-April just remind you of a right young girl, about seventeen years
-old, with hair made out of sunshine, and cheeks made of
-peach-blossoms; and eyes made out of that patch of blue sky over Mrs.
-West's big barn?"
-
-That patch of sky over Mrs. West's barn takes up a heap of my time on
-summer afternoons when I lie close to the windows and read. It is so
-deep and far-off looking that I get to dreaming about Italy, and I
-call it the place where "Tasso's spirit soars and sings." I learned
-this long ago out of the Fifth Reader, and I don't know what else
-Tasso did besides soaring and singing.
-
-But Jean wasn't listening to me. She had reached out and gathered a
-bunch of snowballs and was shaking the night before's rain off them.
-
-"Oh, Ann," she said, "don't they remind you of willow plumes? And
-don't you wish we were old enough to wear _them_ on our hats instead
-of sissy bows? You can get engaged in a minute if you have a willow
-plume on your hat!"
-
-This seemed to remind her of something, for she spoke again the next
-minute.
-
-"Say, I've never told you about Cassius, have I?"
-
-I told her no, although I knew a little about him myself, even if he
-wasn't in that easy Shakespeare that Lamb wrote for kids. And she
-seemed to be lost in thought, so I got lost too. It never is hard for
-me to. I thought: "Mercy, how I have grown!" When I first commenced
-keeping this diary I just despised poetry, and never cared about
-keeping my hair tied out of my eyes, nor my hands clean. You know that
-age! But I soon got over that, for when you get a little bigger being
-in love causes you to admire poetry and also to beautify yourself.
-Jean and I tried very sour buttermilk (the sourer the better) to make
-our complexion lovely, with tansy mixed in, until it got so sour that
-mother said, "Whew! There must be a rat dead in the walls!" So we had
-to pour it out.
-
-In looking over my past life it seems to me that I've been in love
-with somebody or other ever since that night so long ago, when Mammy
-Lou washed me and dressed me up in my tiny hemstitched clothes. And
-with such lovely heroes, too! When I was awfully little I used to be
-crazy about the prince that the mermaid rescued while Hans Christian
-Andersen stood on the beach and watched them. Then I loved Ben Hur
-from his pictures when I was ten, John Halifax when I was eleven, Lord
-Byron when I was twelve--I loved him then, do now, and ever shall,
-world without end, Amen! It is so much easier to love _good-looking_
-people than good ones! And, oh, every handsome young Moor, who ever
-dwelt in "the moonlit halls of the Alhambra!" Washington Irving will
-have a heap to answer for in the making of me. And I used to dream
-about "Bonny Prince Charlie," although Miss Wilburn never _could_
-hammer it into my head which one of the Stuarts he was. And _actors_!
-Well, I would try to make a list and write it on the fly-pages, only
-it might be a bad example to my grandchildren; then, too, there are so
-very few fly-pages.
-
-But I started out to tell how much I've changed since I began this
-book, for now I not only adore poetry, I write it! Fully a quart jar
-full I've written since I found the first buttercup this spring. An
-ode to Venus, an ode to Venice, and a world of just plain odes. Mammy
-Lou washed out a preserves jar and put it on my desk for me to stick
-them in. It saves trouble for her.
-
-Jean soon woke up out of her brown study and commenced telling about
-Cassius.
-
-"I used to meet him on sunshiny mornings going to school," she said.
-"He was about nineteen and so pale and thin and sad-looking that I
-named him 'Cassius.' He walked with a crutch. One morning when the
-wind blew his hat off I saw that his head was very scholarly looking,
-so from that hour I began thinking of him every second of the time.
-That is one of the worst features about being in love, you can't get
-your mind off of the person, and if you _do_ it's on to somebody else.
-Now, just last week I burnt up a great batch of Turkish candy I was
-trying to make on account of a person's eyes. They look at you like
-they're kissing you!" And she fell again into a study, not a brown one
-this time, just a sort of light tan.
-
-"Whose? Cassius's?" I interrupted, shaking her to bring her to.
-
-"Pshaw! No! I had almost forgotten about Cassius! I've never seen
-anything on earth to equal this other person's eyes! But, anyway,
-going back to finish up with Cassius, I thought _of course_, from his
-walking with a crutch, that he must have had a bad spinal trouble when
-he was a child and used to have to sit still and be a scholar, instead
-of chasing cats and breaking out people's window-panes like healthy
-boys. I pictured out how lonely he must feel and how he must long for
-a companion whose mind was equal to his; and it certainly made a
-changed girl of me! I burnt out gallons and gallons of electricity
-every night studying deep things to discuss with him when I should get
-to know him well."
-
-"How did you know what kind of things he admired?" I asked, for some
-men like mathematics and some Dickens and you can't tell the
-difference by passing them on the street.
-
-"Well, it did make a heap of extra trouble to me," she answered,
-sighing as tiredly as if she had been trying on coat suits all day.
-"As I didn't know which was his favorite subject I had to study the
-encyclopedia so as to be sure to hit it."
-
-"Gee whiz!" I couldn't help saying.
-
-"Oh, that ain't all! I wrote down a list of strange words to say to
-him so that he could tell at a glance that I was brilliant. They were
-terrific words too, from aortic and actinic in the a's to
-genuflections in the g's. That's as far as I got."
-
-Mammy Lou called us to breakfast just then, but I could eat only four
-soft-boiled guinea eggs, wondering what on earth Cassius had said in
-reply when Jean said genuflections to him.
-
-"Pshaw! The rest isn't worth telling," she said with a weary look, as
-I pulled her down on the steps right after breakfast and begged her to
-go on about Cassius. "It ended with a disappointment--like everything
-else that has a man connected with it! You're a lucky girl to be in
-love with Lord Byron so long, for dead men break no hearts!"
-
-"Well, tell it!" I begged.
-
-"Oh, it's too disgusting for words, and was a real blow to a person of
-my nature! The idiot didn't have spinal trouble at all, I learned it
-from a lady who knew his mother. He had only sprained his knee, just a
-plain, every-day knee, with playing basket-ball at school, which was
-all the good school ever did him, the lady said. My life has certainly
-been full of disillusions!"
-
-"But, you've learned what genuflections means," I reminded her, for I
-think people ought to be thankful for everything they learn by
-experience, whether it's from an automobile or an auction house.
-
-Pretty soon after this we heard the sound of horses' feet (when I saw
-who it was riding them I just couldn't say _hoofs_), so Jean and I ran
-to the front door. We were very glad when we saw who it was, for if it
-hadn't been for this couple we should have had little to talk about
-down here in the country except telling each other our dreams and
-what's good to take off freckles.
-
-It was Miss Irene Campbell riding past our house, with Mr. Gerald
-Fairfax, her twin flame, in swell tan leggins that come to his knee.
-Miss Irene comes down here sometimes to spend the summer with her
-grandmother, Mrs. West. She used to know Mr. Fairfax so well when
-they were little that there were always several planks off of the
-fence so they could visit together without going all the way around to
-the gate. But he grew up and went one direction and she went another
-and they didn't see each other again until late last summer; but they
-saw each other then, oh, so often! And they found that they must be
-twin flames from the way their "temperaments accord."
-
-I had heard Doctor Gordon say that I was of a nervous temperament and
-was wondering whether or not this was the kind you could have a twin
-flame with; but father says the temperament that Mr. Fairfax and Miss
-Irene have is what makes affinities throw skillets at each other after
-they've been married two weeks. But these two are not going to marry,
-for their friendship is of the _spirit_. They talk about incarnations
-and "Karma," which sounds like the name of a salve to me. Sometimes he
-seems to like her looks as much as her soul, and says she's a typical
-maid of Andalusia. I learned about Andalusia out of Washington Irving
-too, so I know he thinks she's pretty. She has some splendid traits of
-character, mother says, which means I reckon that she doesn't fix her
-hair idiotically just because other women do, nor use enough violet
-sachet to out-smell an automobile.
-
-Miss Irene is very sad, both on account of her liver and her lover.
-Mrs. West says the books she reads are enough to give anybody liver
-complaint, but she has had a disappointment lately that is enough to
-give her appendicitis.
-
-His name is Doctor Bynum and he's as handsome as Apollo and a
-bacteriologist, which is worse than a prohibitionist, for while the
-last-named won't let you drink whisky in peace, the other won't let
-you drink water in peace. Still, Miss Irene says he has the most
-honest brown eyes and the warmest, most comfortable-feeling hands she
-ever saw and she was beginning to love him in spite of their souls
-being on different planes.
-
-"He doesn't care for _one line_ in literature," she told mother, who
-is very fond of her and would like to see her settled in life. "I've
-tried him on everything from Marcus Aurelius to Gray's _Elegy_. When I
-got to this last he said, 'Good Lord! Eliminate it! It's my business
-to keep folks _out_ of the churchyard instead of droning ditties after
-they're in it!' Now, do you call that anything short of savage?"
-
-"I call it sensible," mother told her.
-
-"But I hate sensible people--with _no_ nonsense."
-
-"Oh, nonsense is necessary to the digestion," mother answered quickly,
-"we all know _that_. But a little sense, now and then, it takes to pay
-the market men."
-
-"Which, being interpreted, means that you're like grandmother. You
-hope I'll marry Doctor Bynum, but you greatly fear that it will be
-Gerald Fairfax!"
-
-"All I have to say is that 'The Raven' is not a good fowl to roast for
-dinner," mother answered, with a twinkle in her eye, for Jean had come
-home from Mrs. West's the day before and said that Mr. Fairfax had
-been reading _The Raven_ so real you were afraid it would fly down and
-peck your eyes out.
-
-"Oh, Gerald and I don't believe in flesh foods!" she said loftily,
-then added quickly, "but I'm not going to marry _him_. Neither am I
-going to marry a man who calls my reincarnation theory 'bug-house
-talk.' I came away down here the very day after he said that, without
-telling him good-by or anything. And I'm just disappointed to death
-that he has not followed me long ago. I thought sure he would!"
-
-"You don't deserve that he should ever think of you again," mother
-told her, looking as severe as she does when she tells me I'll never
-get married on earth unless I learn to be more tidy.
-
-"I confess the 'conflicting doubts and opinions' _do_ give me
-indigestion. Doctor Bynum has the most good-looking face I ever saw.
-And he's just lovely when he isn't perfectly hateful, and--mercy me! I
-think I'll get Mammy Lou to give me a spoonful of soda in a glass of
-warm water. I have an awful heaviness around my heart!"
-
-This talk took place two or three days ago and we hadn't seen her
-again until this morning when she came riding past our house. They
-waved at us as they got even with our gate and turned off the main
-road to the little path that leads to the prettiest part of the woods.
-
-"Jean, what would you do if Mr. Fairfax looked at you the way he looks
-at her?" I asked, as we sat down and fixed ourselves to watch them out
-of sight.
-
-"I'd marry him quicker than you could hiccough!" she answered, gazing
-after them with a yearning look. "What would you do?"
-
-"I don't know," I told her, and I don't. "Some people seem to be happy
-even after they're married, but I think it would be nice to be like
-Dante and Beatrice, with no gas bills nor in-laws to bother you."
-
-"Shoo! Well, I bet she marries him in spite of all that talk about the
-spirit. A spirit is all right to marry if he smells like good cigars
-and is _on the spot_!"
-
-"Yes, I'm afraid Doctor Bynum has lost his chance; for a girl will
-love the nearest man--when the lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom."
-
-"But I heard Mrs. West say the other day that Mr. Fairfax would make a
-mighty bad husband, in spite of the good looks and deep voice. He'd
-always forget when the oatmeal was out."
-
-"Yes," I answered, "I heard her tell mother the other day that she
-would leave all she had to somebody else if she did marry him, for she
-believed in every married couple there ought to be at least one that
-had sense enough to keep the fences mended up."
-
-"Why, that old lady's mind is as narrow as a ready-made nightgown,"
-Jean exclaimed in surprise. "Why, affinities marry in every page of
-the pink Sunday papers!"
-
-"But really who _does_ make the living?" I asked, for I had heard
-mother say that that kind of folks never worked.
-
-"The lawyer that divo'ces 'em makes the livin'," Mammy Lou said then,
-popping her black head out through mother's white curtains. "An' them
-two, if they marries, will fu'nish him with sev'al square meals! I've
-knowed 'em both sence they secon' summer," she said, a brown finger
-pointing in the direction they had gone, and a smile coming over her
-face, for second summers are to old women what war times are to old
-men, only more so. "I said it then and I say it now, he's too pore!
-Across the chist! He thinks too much, which ain't no 'count. It leads
-to _devilment_! Folks ain't got no business thinkin'--they ought to go
-to sleep when they're through work!"
-
-"But his sympathy----" I started, for that's what Miss Irene is
-always talking about, but mammy interrupted me.
-
-"Sympathy nothin'! How much sympathy do you reckon he'd have on a
-freezin' mornin' with wet kin'lin' and the stovepipe done fell down?
-She better look out for a easy-goin' man that ain't carin' 'bout
-nothin' 'cept how to keep the barn full o' corn and good shoes for
-seven or eight chil'en!"
-
-Mammy Lou mostly knows what's she talking about, but somehow I hate to
-think of Miss Irene with seven children. She reminds me so much of a
-flower. When I stop to think of it, all the girls I've written about
-remind me of flowers. Cousin Eunice is like a lovely iris, and Ann
-Lisbeth is like a Marechal Niel rose. Miss Cis Reeves used to look
-like a bright, happy little pansy, but that was before the twins were
-born. Now her collar to her shirtwaist always hikes up in the back and
-shows the skin underneath and her hat (whenever she gets a chance to
-put on a hat) is over one ear, and lots of times she looks like she
-wishes nobody in her family ever had been born, especially the twin
-that cries the loudest.
-
-When I told Miss Irene that she reminded me of a flower, she said
-well, it must be the jasmine flower, or something else like a funeral,
-for she was as desolate as everybody was in _Ben Bolt_. (I always
-wondered why they didn't bury "Sweet Alice" with the rest of her
-family instead of in a corner obscure and alone.) I told her then just
-to pacify her that maybe she would feel better after she got married
-one way or another and stopped reading books named _The Call
-of_----all sorts of things, and thinking that she had to answer all
-the calls. Cousin Eunice says her only troubles in matrimony were
-stomach and eye teeth and frozen water-pipes. She never gets disgusted
-with life except on nights when Rufe goes to the lodge to see the
-third degree administered. She can even write a few articles now if
-she gives Waterloo a pan of water and a wash-rag to play with, but
-she says many of her brightest thoughts never were fountain-penned
-because he happened to squall in the midst of them.
-
-For the last few days Mr. Fairfax has been riding around the country
-looking for a little cabin where he can be by himself and fish and
-read Schopenhauer. I imagine from what they've read before me that he
-must be the man who wrote the post-cards you send to newly engaged
-couples saying, "Cheer up! The worst is yet to come!"
-
-Mr. Fairfax says the blue smoke will curl up from his cabin chimney at
-sunset and form a "symphony in color" against the green tree-tops; and
-he can lead the "untrammeled life." He is begging Miss Irene to go and
-lead it with him, I'm sure; and she's half a mind to do it, but can't
-bear the _thoughts_ of it when she remembers Doctor Bynum's eyes and
-hands. Altogether the poor girl looks as uncertain as if she was
-walking on a pavement covered with banana peelings.
-
-I think the blue-smoke-cabin idea is very romantic, but when I
-mentioned it to Mammy Lou she got mad and jerked the skillet off the
-stove so suddenly that the grease popped out and burnt her finger.
-
-"Blue smoke! Blue _blazes_!" she said, walloping her dish-rag around
-and around in it. "I hope that pretty critter ain't goin' to be took
-in by no such talk as that! Blue smoke curlin'! Well, _she'll_ be the
-one to make the fire that curls it!"
-
-
-It's a good thing that father gave me a fountain pen on my last
-birthday, for I should hate to write what happened last night with a
-dull pencil.
-
-Mrs. West had invited Jean and me to spend the night at her house, for
-Miss Irene was feeling worse and worse and needed something light to
-cheer her up. Well, it was just long enough after supper for us to be
-wishing that we hadn't eaten so many strawberries when Mr. Fairfax
-came up the walk looking as grand and gloomy as Edgar Allan Poe, right
-after he had written a poem to his mother-in-law. He said let's take a
-walk in the moonlight for the air was _madding_. I always thought
-before it was _maddening_, and should be applied only to nuisances,
-like your next-door neighbor's children, or the piano in the flat
-above you; but I saw from the dictionary and the way he acted later on
-that he was right, both about the word and the way he applied it.
-
-Not far down the road from Mrs. West's front gate is a very old-timey
-school-house, so dilapidated that Jean says she knows it's the one
-where the little girl said to the little boy, forty years ago:
-
-      "I'm sorry that I spelt the word,
-        I hate to go above you;
-      Because," the brown eyes lower fell;
-        "Because, you see, I love you!"
-
-Jean didn't mean a bit of harm when she quoted it, but the sound of
-that last line made them look as shivery as if they had malaria. We
-soon found a nice place and sat down on a log that looked less like
-snakes than the others, and when we saw that there wasn't quite room
-enough for us all Jean and I had the politeness to go away out of
-hearing and find another log, over closer to the road. Even then we
-could hear, for the night was so still and we were so busy with our
-thoughts.
-
-I began thinking: What if _I_ should have such a hard time to find a
-lover that is sympathetic and systematic at the same time? Suppose Sir
-Reginald de Beverley isn't sympathetic about Lord Byron! Suppose he
-likes his parliamentary speeches better than his poetry, like one
-husband of a lady that I know does!
-
-But my mind was diverted just then by hearing words coming from the
-direction of Miss Irene and Mr. Fairfax so much like the little girl
-said to the little boy forty years ago that I was astonished. I had
-been told that a girl could always keep a man from proposing when she
-wanted to! But he was saying that she _should_ come with him and lead
-the untrammeled life, and she was looking pleased and frightened and
-was telling him to hush, but was letting him go on; and they were both
-standing up and holding hands in the moonlight.
-
-"I'm not at all sure it's the untrammeled life I'm looking for," she
-said in little catchy breaths; "but I'm so wretched! And you're the
-only one who cares! I suppose I may as well--oh, I wish I had somebody
-here to keep me from acting an idiot!"
-
-Now, if Shakespeare or "The Duchess" had written this story they would
-have pretended that Doctor Bynum came around the curve in the road at
-that very minute and taking off his hat said: "Nay, you shall be my
-wife!"
-
-But it was only Mrs. West coming down the road, carrying a heavy
-crocheted shawl to keep Miss Irene from catching her death of cold!
-But listen! The minute we got back to the house the telephone bell
-rang and it was a long-distance call for Miss Irene. She knew in a
-_second_ from the city it was from that Doctor Bynum was at the other
-end of the line. She looked at that telephone like a person in the
-fourth story of a house afire looks at the hook-and-ladder man.
-
-Mr. Fairfax said well, he must be going; and we all got out on the
-porch while she and Doctor Bynum made up their quarrel at the rate of
-two dollars for the first three minutes and seventy-five cents a
-minute extra. (I know because father sometimes talks to that city
-about cotton.) And he's coming down Sunday. And Jean and I are holding
-our breath.
-
-
-We're having the very last fire of the season to-night! A big,
-booming, beautiful one that makes you think winter wasn't such a bad
-time after all! A cold spell has come, and oh, it is so cold! It makes
-you wonder how it had the heart to come now and cause the flowers to
-feel so out of place. But it has also caused us to have another fire
-and I love a fire. I even like to make them, and lots of times I tell
-Dilsey to let me build the fire in my room myself. I sit down on the
-hearth and sit and _sit_, building that fire. Then I get to looking
-into it and thinking. Thinking is a mighty bad habit, like Mammy Lou
-says.
-
-I can't do this any more though--for to-night we're having the last
-fire of the season. To-morrow spring cleaning will be gone through
-with and the chimneys all newspapered up. No matter how cold it gets
-after _that_ you can't expect to have a fire after you've _sprung
-cleaned_! I never _am_ going to spring clean at my house. The dust and
-soapsuds are not the worst part of house cleaning, though they are bad
-enough, goodness knows! What I hate worst to see is the battered old
-bureaus and shabby old quilts that you've kept a secret from the
-public for years pulled out from their corners by the hair of their
-heads and knocked around in the back yard without any pity for their
-poor old bones! I never see a moving van going through the city
-streets loaded with pitiful old furniture without thinking "That used
-to be _somebody's_ Lares and Penates!"
-
-By-the-way, Mammy Lou is crazy for Dovie to have some more twins so
-she can name them "Scylla and Chrybdis." She hasn't much hopes though,
-for she says lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Father
-says it wouldn't be lightning, it would be _thunder_ to have two more
-little pickaninnies always standing around under his feet and have to
-explain to everybody that came along how they got their curious names.
-
-Mammy Lou heard Miss Irene say "Scylla and Chrybdis;" Miss Irene
-doesn't say it any more though. Doctor Bynum didn't wait for the train
-to bring him down here that Sunday, but whizzed through the country in
-his automobile Saturday night. Then he "venied, vidied, vicied" in
-such a hurry that everybody in town knew it before nap time Sunday
-afternoon. Mr. Fairfax has gone away on a long trip. Jean said if he
-had had any sense he would have seen that Miss Irene Campbell wasn't
-the only girl in the world, but he didn't see it and he's gone.
-
-Next week Jean is going home and when I think of how lonesome I'll be
-something nearly pops inside of me. They have been writing and writing
-for me to go home with Jean and stay until Rufe and Cousin Eunice and
-Waterloo get ready to come down this summer, but mother says I may not
-go unless Jean and I both promise to reform. We're not to eat any more
-stuffed olives nor write any more poetry--and, _think_ of it! I'm to
-stop writing in _my diary_! Mother says I'll never have any practical
-sense if I don't begin now to learn things. I tell her, "Am I to blame
-if I love a fountain pen better than a darning needle?" The Lord made
-me so. And I _hate_ sewing. It's as hard for me to sew as it is to
-keep from writing.
-
-Yet if I go home with Jean I must quit writing. Must give up my
-diary. Must not write one line of poetry, no matter how much my head
-is buzzing with it! Why, if poets couldn't _write_ their poetry they'd
-burst a blood vessel! I can't even take you with me to Jean's house
-and read over what I have written in happier days, you poor little
-forsaken diary!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-
-It seems to me that the writing habit is kinder like poison oak; it's
-sure to break out on you in the spring, and you can never get it
-entirely out of your system.
-
-I've tried my best to keep from writing, and when you have done your
-best and failed, why I don't believe even Robert Bruce's spider could
-have done any more.
-
-I promised mother I would stop writing in my diary and I have--for
-such a long time that every one of the hems in my dresses has had to
-be let out since I wrote last. But now I just must break my promise,
-and I reckon if you are going to break a promise at all you might as
-well break it all to pieces. So I'll just dive in and tell all that
-happened since I wrote last.
-
-You remember that fluffy-skirted widow that I told you about being
-down here, my diary, and I sharpened seventeen pencils for--a long
-time ago? Well, she said that _she_ believed every minute of this life
-was made for enjoyment. She told it to a young man that told it to
-father that told it to mother and I happened to hear. She said you
-ought to do the things you enjoy most, as long as they didn't bother
-anybody else, and if you did things you had to repent of afterward,
-why, even then, you ought to cut out your sackcloth by a becoming
-pattern!
-
-Everybody in town heard that she said it, and Brother Sheffield said
-it was a _heathenish_ thing to say! He preached his Jezebel sermon the
-very next Sunday, although it wasn't due until nearer Easter bonnet
-time. Maybe he wasn't to blame so much, though, for the presiding
-elder was due that Sunday and found out at the last minute he couldn't
-get there in time for the morning service; so Brother Sheffield had to
-preach the first sermon he could get his hands on, I reckon. The
-presiding elder (I _wonder_ if you ought to begin him with a capital
-letter? I never wrote "presiding elder" before in my life and maybe
-never will again, so it's no use getting up to go and look for it in
-the dictionary) well, he got in late that afternoon and spent the
-night at our house where he kept the supper table in a roar telling
-funny tales about the ignorance and tacky ways of the country brethren
-he had stayed with the night before. He was an awfully popular
-presiding elder with his members.
-
-But what I started out to say when I commenced writing to-night was
-that surely mother wouldn't be so cruel as not to want my
-grandchildren to know a few little last things about all the friends
-I've written of in here, and also a few little last things about me. I
-always like to read a book that winds up that way. For instance, you
-will enjoy hearing that Miss Irene is spending every minute of her
-time just about now running baby blue ribbon in her underclothes. And
-Miss Merle has long ago quit running it in hers!
-
-Miss Irene has stopped being a "pseudo-Poe in petticoats," as father
-one time called her, but not to her face. Doctor Bynum told her that
-he thought one bright magazine story that would make a "T.B." patient
-sit up in bed and laugh was worth all the graveyard gloom that Poe
-ever wrote.
-
-And before I get clear away from the subject of Miss Merle I must tell
-you that Mr. St. John is still the most bashful, though married, man I
-ever heard of. I never shall forget the time he wouldn't let us see
-his undershirt--when it was hanging in an up-stairs window, too. But
-Jean wrote me not long ago that when the census man came around to see
-how many folks lived there and how many times each one had been
-married and if they kept a cow, etc., Mr. St. John happened to be the
-one to go to the door and answer the man's questions. Now, it does
-seem that if he and Miss Merle have been married long enough for her
-to leave off the ribbon he might leave off the blushes; but they were
-all standing around looking at him, which of course made it worse. So
-when the census man said, "How many children is your wife the mother
-of?" instead of speaking out boldly, "None!" Jean said his face turned
-every color in the curriculum and he stammered, "Not any--that _I_
-know of!" And then he looked around at them as if to see whether or
-not _they_ knew of any lying around loose about the house.
-
-I haven't seen Jean since she was down here, but we write eighteen
-pages a week. I didn't get to go on my visit to her house as I
-expected, for we went to Florida instead. We all went, that is, us
-three, and Waterloo and his family besides Ann Lisbeth and Doctor
-Gordon.
-
-Doctor Gordon was the one that started it. He caught pneumonia one
-dreary day in the early spring when he was already sick in bed, but
-got up and went out to the hospital to operate for appendicitis. Ann
-Lisbeth almost went into catalepsy, trying to keep him from going,
-but it was a very expensive appendix, he said, so he got up and went
-out and bottled it. The changing from his warm room to the cold air
-gave him pneumonia, although the doctors say it is caused by a germ.
-I'll never believe this, not even if I marry one!
-
-Well, he finally got over his spell by "lysis" instead of "crisis,"
-but I hope this will never come to Mammy Lou's ears, or she will
-fairly long for more twins in the Dovie family.
-
-When Doctor Gordon got able to be out a little all the other doctors
-told him that he had better go to a warm climate for a month or two,
-for it was still so cold, so he and Ann Lisbeth persuaded Rufe and
-Cousin Eunice to go too, and they all wrote for us to hurry up and get
-ready so we could go with them.
-
-Mother said she'd just _love_ to go, but she didn't see how we
-possibly could, for none of us had any clothes and she had always
-heard that Florida was fairly alive with rich Yankees! Mammy Lou
-spoke up then and said, well, she was sure Ann looked exactly like a
-rich Yankee, and she was the only one that folks was going to look at
-anyhow! So mother took heart and we went.
-
-Father had to have a new overcoat, for the weather has been colder
-this spring than ever the oldest inhabitant can tell about, and as
-they wrote us to get ready in such a hurry, on account of poor Doctor
-Gordon's cough, he didn't have time to have one made at his regular
-place, so he bought one ready-made, a light tan one, the poor dear!
-And it had two long "heimer" names from Chicago printed on the label
-at the collar.
-
-We got ready in such a rush that none of us had time to rip this label
-out, though I lived to regret it many a time! It was too hot to wear
-it when we got down there, but father had got scared up about catching
-pneumonia, so he insisted on carrying it around on his arm all the
-time, inside out; and there was not one millionaire, not one tennis
-champion, nor famous authoress we met, but what I saw the eyes of
-fixed, at one time or another, on those "heimer" names!
-
-That's one delightful thing about Florida--you get to see so many
-people that you never would see at home. And everybody mixes like
-candidates! For instance, you may have a mosquito on you one minute
-that you will see on a Russian anarchist the next. The mosquitoes down
-there are so big that you can easily recognize their features. And apt
-as not you'll go in bathing every day with a person _so famous_ when
-he's at home that he is never invited to dine with anybody that hasn't
-got monogram china and _pâté de foie gras_.
-
-I've noticed that the things people tell about after they come home
-from a trip depend a good deal on the disposition they carry with them
-on it. It's the way with Florida. If you're an optimist you'll come
-back and tell about the palms, roses and sunsets. If you're a
-pessimist you'll mention snakes, hotel bills and buzzards. The honest
-truth is there's quite enough of them all to go around.
-
-You're impressed with the country from the first morning that you get
-into it and raise up (half way) in your berth and look out the car
-window. At first there seems to be a mighty lot of just flat scenery,
-with tall trees that have all their branches at the tiptop. These
-trees remind you of pictures of the Holy Land that you used to see in
-the big Bible your mother and father would give you on Sunday
-afternoons to keep you quiet while they could take a nap.
-
-You begin to think that what you're seeing is too beautiful to be
-true, though, from the first minute you look out on a blue bay that is
-deep green in places, and has purple streaks in it. But when you row
-over to an island all covered with palms and find a strip of beach
-that has bushels and bushels of tiny shells, that the mermaids used to
-make necklaces out of--why, nothing on earth but your _feet_ hurting
-so bad makes you believe it is not a dream!
-
-Florida has all the things in it that you see when you shut your eyes
-and smell a jasmine flower!
-
-The climate is fine for the lungs, but very bad on the alimenary canal
-and curling-iron hair!
-
-We stopped at all the points of interest as we went on down. A point
-of interest is a place that the post-cards tell lies about. Still I do
-think Florida cards come nearer telling the truth than those of most
-places, for the country is very nearly as many colors as they make it
-out to be.
-
-Cousin Eunice said she thought sending post-cards was the _one_
-melancholy pleasure of traveling, and so I bought a quarter's worth at
-every place.
-
-Traveling _is_ a melancholy pleasure when you have a baby that you
-won't let drink a drop of water unless it has had the germs all stewed
-in it. Waterloo is getting to be such a big boy now, too; but he
-still talks like a telegram--just the most important words of what he
-wants to say, with all the others left out. He's crazy about
-foot-ball, chewing-gum and billy-goats. And you just ought to hear him
-chew gum!
-
-Among the points of interest we saw was the oldest house in America.
-It is a _very_ interesting place. It has a marble bust of Lord Byron
-in it!
-
-I don't remember another thing, I believe, except that! Oh yes, I do,
-too! I do remember a startling thing I heard about a very old bed in
-that house. I heard the guide telling that this was the bed that
-William the Conqueror and Maria Theresa slept on! I hate to hear folks
-get their history mixed, so I had just opened my mouth to say "Why,
-they were not _married_," when I spied the bust of his lordship in the
-next room. After that I didn't care how many tales they made up on
-William and Maria!
-
-Poor little Waterloo didn't much fancy the oldest house, but when we
-drove up to "The Fountain of Youth," and he saw the clear, sparkling
-"drink" that helped Ponce get rid of his double chin and crow's-feet
-he commenced to howl for some. Doctor Gordon had told us before we got
-there that we mustn't dare drink any of it unless there was a signed
-certificate that there wasn't any "coli" in it.
-
-We looked all around, but as we didn't see any sign, Rufe thought
-maybe he'd better not give him any. There didn't _look_ to be any
-"coli," either, but still Rufe didn't like the idea of his drinking
-it. When Waterloo saw that they didn't intend to give him any he
-commenced to kick and squall and get so red in the face with his
-dancing up and down that Rufe finally screamed back to the carriage
-that Doctor Gordon was in and asked him if he thought one little glass
-would hurt Waterloo. Cousin Eunice screamed back at the same time and
-said for Doctor Gordon to give his _honest_ opinion, for she wouldn't
-have the little angel catch anything so far away from home for the
-whole of the East coast.
-
-Doctor Gordon, who had been made nervous by his spell, screamed back
-to them for Heaven's sake let the little imp drink till he
-_busted_--only he hoped it wouldn't make him stay as _young_ as he was
-then!
-
-So Rufe motioned for the lady that hands you the water, with a
-North-of-the-Mason-and-Dixon accent, to hush talking about her friend,
-Ponce de Leon, long enough to give the glass an extra scrubbing and
-hand Waterloo some water, which she did. This didn't do as much good,
-though, as we had hoped for. Rufe was in such a hurry to get away from
-"The Fountain of Youth" that his hand trembled some and he spilt the
-first glassful down Waterloo's little front. This made the darling so
-mad, and I don't blame him either, that he slapped the second glassful
-out of Rufe's hand. He washed Teddy Bear's face with the third, and
-threw the fourth in Cousin Eunice's white linen lap, when she tried to
-soothe him.
-
-Rufe ran his hand down into his pocket before he told the driver to
-drive on, for he knew that milk was fifteen cents a quart in Florida,
-and water was almost priceless. The lady told him that she would have
-to collect fifty cents for the water that Waterloo had wasted, and
-that washing out the glass was twenty-five cents extra.
-
-Rufe handed her a twenty-dollar bill, but she couldn't change it. So
-he called back to Doctor Gordon to ask him if he could.
-
-"_Change!_" said Doctor Gordon, looking surprised that Rufe should
-have asked him such an embarrassing question. "Why, I haven't a
-_thing_ left but my watch-fob and thermometer-case and wouldn't have
-had them if I hadn't worn them in a chamois bag around my neck!"
-
-So Rufe told the lady he would mail her a check for the amount with
-interest.
-
-Later on we saw ostrich farms and the biggest cigar factory in the
-world. I _think_ they said it was the biggest. Anyway, if there's a
-bigger one I don't care about smelling it!
-
-It's long past time for the lights to go out, mine especially, for
-they never want me to sit up until I get really interested in
-anything; but I believe I will throw a black sateen petticoat up over
-the transom, which I have found out you can do very well if you have
-two nails up there to hang it on, and tell one more little thing that
-happened on that trip. I say "little thing," but it seemed a monstrous
-big thing to me at the time.
-
-When we were about half-way through Georgia on our way home, some of
-us commenced having chills. Doctor Gordon had his first, but he didn't
-say anything about it to Ann Lisbeth until he got to shaking so that
-she saw something was the matter. Then mother and Cousin Eunice had
-one apiece. Doctor Gordon said it wasn't anything to be alarmed about,
-for it was just a little malaria cropping out, but I felt so sorry
-for them that I told Ann Lisbeth if she would go with me I would go up
-to the baggage car and see if we could get out some heavy underclothes
-from our trunk.
-
-We had to stagger through a long string of sleepers, for we were in
-the backest one, but we were rewarded when we finally did get to the
-baggage car. There was a merry-eyed express messenger in there who
-said he would be _glad_ to pull and haul those fifteen or twenty
-trunks that were on top of ours! May the gods reward him, for it was
-an awful job! And so we got out enough clothes for our cold and
-destitute families.
-
-Now, you may have noticed before this, my diary, that I am a forgetful
-person. I can remember the last words of Charles II, or anything like
-that, but I forget what I did yesterday.
-
-I had entirely forgotten about stuffing oranges in with all our
-clothes when I helped mother pack our trunks! And we were in such a
-hurry in the express car that we didn't stop to shake the clothes out
-as we fished them up from the trays; it wouldn't have been polite to,
-anyway, in front of that good-looking express messenger, and we didn't
-have room enough. So we had just lifted things out as we came to them
-and eased them up in our arms as we started on back on our walk to our
-sleeper.
-
-But the oranges hadn't forgotten about being there! I reckon they
-wanted to see what all that disturbance was about for, I cross my
-heart, _just_ as I got opposite the swellest-looking man in that whole
-string of sleepers, a man with silk socks and golf sticks, a long
-sleeve of mother's knit corset-cover dropped down against the seat in
-front of him and four oranges rolled out! They rolled slowly, one by
-one, and dropped to the floor with muffled thuds. Then they rolled
-some more and didn't stop until they reached his feet.
-
-That's how I knew he had on silk socks.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV
-
-
-I'm as lonesome as _Marianna in the Moated Grange_ to-night! Isn't
-that the lonesomest poem on earth? Everything about it is unsanitary,
-too, from the rusty flower-pots to the blue fly "buzzing in the pane."
-No wonder it got on Marianna's nerves, in her condition, too! But she
-had one thing to be thankful for--she didn't know how many germs that
-fly had on its feet!
-
-I'm lonesome for Jean--or somebody! Thank goodness it is nearly time
-for Waterloo to come! Cousin Eunice said in a letter that we had from
-her to-day she was trying to raise Waterloo right, but he was a trial
-to her feelings! Now, poor Cousin Eunice has read Herbert Spencer for
-the sake of Waterloo's future education ever since he has been born,
-and she has never let him out of her sight with a nurse for fear she
-would feed him chewed-up chestnuts and teach him about the Devil. I
-reckon you spell him with a capital letter, if you don't waste them on
-presiding elders. But Waterloo doesn't always show how carefully he's
-been brought up. He is of nervous temperament and told a woman who was
-sewing on the machine right loud the other day: "Hus', hus'! God's
-sake, make noise _easy_!"
-
-This is disheartening after all the trouble she has taken with his
-morals and diet and things like that! She never lets him eat the
-"deadly" things that Doctor Gordon is always talking about, but she
-_does_ keep a little pure sugar candy on hand all the time to be used
-only as a last resort. When she can't make him do any other way on
-earth she uses the candy.
-
-Speaking of deadly things reminds me of Doctor Bynum's friends, the
-germs. He has told Miss Irene so many stories about their unpleasant
-ways that she got to not believing in kissing, but he said pshaw! it
-looked like we all had to die of germs anyhow, and so he'd rather die
-of that kind than any other!
-
-Cousin Eunice's letters always tell us so many interesting things
-about all our friends in the city. She and Ann Lisbeth still live
-close neighbors, but they have both bought beautiful places out on one
-of the pikes and each one is claiming to be more countrified than the
-other. One day Ann Lisbeth ran over and told Cousin Eunice that Doctor
-Gordon had heard an owl in their yard the night before, but Cousin
-Eunice told her that wasn't anything! She and Rufe had had a _bat_ in
-their bedroom!
-
-Doctor Gordon has two automobiles now. He had them the last time I was
-in the city and I got to find out exactly what "limousine" means. I
-had an idea before that it meant _dark green_, because--oh, well, I
-needn't tell the reason; it was silly enough to think such a thing
-without making excuses for it. But you know so many swell cars _are_
-painted dark green, and so many swell cars are limousines!
-
-Ann Lisbeth is a great help to Doctor Gordon in his practice, he says.
-She always remembers the different babies' names and looks up subjects
-for him in his surgical books that would knock the knee-cap off of
-Jean's little word, "genuflections."
-
-No matter how fine a doctor a lady's husband is she is never permitted
-to mention it to her friends, for this is called "unethical." But if
-she's expecting company of an afternoon she can happen to have a
-bottle with a queer thing inside setting on the mantelpiece and when
-the company asks what on earth that thing is she can say, "For
-goodness' sake! My husband must have forgotten that! Why that's
-Senator Himuck's appendix!"
-
-Ann Lisbeth seems to get sweeter every year and you would never know
-she has a foreign accent now except on Sunday night when the cook's
-away and the gas stove doesn't do right.
-
-Another good piece of news Cousin Eunice wrote to-day was that the
-Youngs are going to try it again at the bungalow this summer.
-Professor Young has to go somewhere to rest up from his studies. For
-nearly eighteen months now he's been sitting up late at night and
-spending the whole of Saturdays, even taking his coffee out to the
-laboratory in a thermos bottle, studying pharmacy. He is delighted
-with the progress he has made, for he says he has not only learned how
-to make a perfectly splendid cold cream for his wife's complexion, but
-has discovered just which bad-smelling stuff put with another
-bad-smelling stuff is best to develop his films. He says his knowledge
-of pharmacy has saved him a lot of money in this way.
-
-Speaking of curious couples reminds me of the Gayles. They're not half
-as queer now as they were before they married though. At present they
-are neither in Heaven, nor on earth, exactly, but they are cruising on
-the Mediterranean. They send me post-cards from every place and I
-stick them in my album with great pride.
-
-Another family that we're always glad to hear from is the Macdonalds.
-Poor little fluffy-haired Miss Cis! I reckon the very last of her
-dimples will soon be changed into wrinkles, for there's _another_ one
-since the twins! Nobody can say that Miss Cis is not bearing up
-bravely, though. She does all she can to present a stylish,
-straight-front appearance when she goes out, which isn't often. But at
-home they are all perfectly happy together, Mr. Macdonald getting down
-on the floor to play bear, and if he _does_ look more like a devil's
-horse while he's doing it, with his long arms and legs, the twins
-don't know the difference.
-
-Marrying has helped Julius' looks more than anybody I ever saw. His
-cheeks have filled out until he's as handsome as a floor-walker. And
-they're so contented that Marcella says actually when she finds a pin
-pointing toward her she doesn't know what to wish for.
-
-You may have caught on to it before now, my diary, that the reason I'm
-telling you this very last news of all our friends is because I'm
-going to stop writing _sure enough_ to-night! I'm ashamed to keep
-breaking my promise to mother.
-
-The only ones I've left out, I believe, are Aunt Laura and Bertha. I
-wish I had forgotten them for I don't like to say anything hateful in
-my diary.
-
-Aunt Laura has joined some kind of New Thoughters and has grown
-quantities of new brown hair on the strength of it. And she dresses in
-champagne silk all the time.
-
-As for Bertha--she _lives_ to keep up with the "best people," meaning
-by this that she runs up to the hairdresser's every other day to see
-if she can learn how many "society men" have thrown their wives down
-the steps or poured boiling coffee over them since she last heard.
-
-I'm sorry I thought of Bertha so near the last, for I don't want to
-leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, my diary. So I'll branch
-off and mention something sweet right away.
-
-That blessed Waterloo! He's the sweetest thing I know anything about!
-Just about this time I reckon he's begging his "Daddy-boy" to sing
-Feep Alsie, Ben Bolt, for that's been his precious little sleepy song
-ever since he's been born.
-
-When I think of those three and how happy they are, and how satisfied
-they are just to be together, I know that Rufe told me the truth that
-day, a long, long time ago! There is only one subject worth writing
-about--or one object worth living for! May every one of you
-grandchildren find just such an object, and be as happy as they are
-while living for it!
-
-It does seem that I ought to be able to think of something beautiful
-to wind up my diary with! Everything about me is beautiful! The
-honeysuckle is smelling like the very soul of spring and love just
-outside my window--and there's a bust of Lord Byron on my mantelpiece
-close by. Such a tiny bust--the curly head just fits into the palm of
-my hand--when I get grown I'm going to have one big enough to burn
-candles before! Not that I shall burn candles before it--for, to tell
-the truth, I'd much rather be burning my fingers cooking oatmeal for
-some big, brown-eyed "Daddy-boy" and tiny, brown-eyed Waterloo!
-
-Mammy Lou came to my window just as I wrote this last and stuck her
-head in.
-
-"Name o' Deuteronomy!" she said in a loud whisper when she saw this
-book open before me. "What good'll your _gran'children_ do you, I'd
-like to know--if you set up all night and lose your looks so you'll
-nuvver fin' a husban'?"
-
-
-THE END
-
-
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