"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—notwhen 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 theyhad 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 howThe Ladies' Own Journalsaid 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 introductionis 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'ssomethings 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 littlegraino' 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 arich 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'syou. 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 perspirationfrom 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 inThe Journal for the Cognoscentimade 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 historyto 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 astory! 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 twowe've just left. Gayle hasn't red blood enough in him to stain achigoe'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'mtired! 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 heplunged 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, justwhatwas he to say? Andwhenwas 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 isred-bloodierthan 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 gotsosleepy (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 ifsomethingdidn'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 theynever would be encouraged to try to do things. I knew Icoulddo 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—andthenthe unexpected happened.
We heard a sound in the parlor close back of us and thefirstthing we knew there was Mr. Gayle raising the window that opens on to the porch, and he and Miss Claxton came over andlooked 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,longtime. "There has been created for me this night not only a new year, but a newHeavenand——"
"And a newearth," 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 typewriteraway from the door. But his voice was solemn when he said it, and we all felt likepuppy dogsfor 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 amanto 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'sa mighty pore thing to warm your feet againston a cold night!"
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 thismorning, 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 wereold enough to wearthemon 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 sourthat 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 lovegood-lookingpeople 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 nevercouldhammer it into my headwhich one of the Stuarts he was. Andactors! 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 scholarlylooking, 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 youdoit'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 thoughtof 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. Ipictured 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 actinicin 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 wasall 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 sayhoofs), 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. Sheused 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 thespirit. 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 saysshe'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 tolove him in spite of their souls being on different planes.
"He doesn't care forone linein 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'sElegy. When I got to this last he said, 'Good Lord! Eliminate it! It's my business to keep folksoutof 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—withnononsense."
"Oh, nonsense is necessary to the digestion," mother answered quickly, "we all knowthat. 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 readingThe Ravenso 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 marryhim. 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'dogive 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 ison 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 aready-made nightgown," Jean exclaimed in surprise. "Why, affinities marry in every page of the pink Sunday papers!"
"But really whodoesmake 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 todevilment! 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'swhat 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 oftimes 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 inBen 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 namedThe 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 thethoughtsof 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! Blueblazes!" 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'llbe 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. Fairfaxcame 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 wasmadding. I always thought before it wasmaddening, 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!"
"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 shequoted 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 ifIshould 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 girlcould always keep a man from proposing when she wanted to! But he was saying that sheshouldcome 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 housethe telephone bell rang and it was a long-distance call for Miss Irene. She knew in asecondfrom 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 feelso 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 andsit, 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 afterthatyou can't expect to have a fire after you'vesprung cleaned! I neveramgoing 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 backyard 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 besomebody'sLares 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 bethunderto 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 townknew 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,thinkof it! I'm to stop writing inmy 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 Ihatesewing. 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'twritetheir 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!
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 thatshebelieved 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 aheathenishthing 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 handson, I reckon. The presiding elder (Iwonderif 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 herunderclothes. 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 longenough 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—thatIknow of!" And then he looked around at them as if to see whether or nottheyknew 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 wentinto 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 justloveto 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 personso famouswhen he's at home that he is never invited to dine with anybody that hasn't got monogram china andpâté 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'llmention 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 yourfeethurting 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 theonemelancholy pleasure of traveling, and so I bought a quarter's worth at every place.
Travelingisa 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 init. 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 averyinteresting 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 notmarried," 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'tlookto 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 hishonestopinion,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 hebusted—only he hoped it wouldn't make him stay asyoungas 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, andthrew 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 athingleft 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 biggestcigar factory in the world. Ithinkthey 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 Ifelt 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 begladto 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 sucha 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,justas 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.
I'm as lonesome asMarianna in the Moated Grangeto-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 educationever 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 noiseeasy!"
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 shedoeskeep 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 unpleasantways 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 abatin 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 meantdark 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 knowso many swell carsarepainted 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 fromevery 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'sanotherone 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 hedoeslook 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 writingsure enoughto-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—shelivesto 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 badtaste 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 yourgran'childrendo 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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