220CHAPTER XXIThe Clan In Conclave
Mr. Bob Bucknor was troubled. He had always prided himself on keeping an open house for his relations and to him Cousin Ann was a kind of symbol of consanguinity. He paid very little attention to her as a rule, except to be scrupulously polite. He had been trained in politeness to Cousin Ann from his earliest childhood and had endeavored to bring his own children up with the same strict regard to hospitality and courtesy to his aged relative. His son had profited by his teaching and was ever kindly to the old lady, but his daughters had rebelled, and it could not be denied were even openly rude to the chronic visitor. Now this project of European travel was afoot and the problem of what to do with Cousin Ann must be settled. The masculine representatives of the family were meeting in Ryeville and the matter was soon under discussion.
“It’s the women,” declared Big Josh. “They221are kicking like steers and they say they won’t stand for her any longer.”
“My wife says she has got a nice old cousin who would like to come and stay with us, and that she does all the darning wherever she stays and looks after the children besides. Nobody ever heard of Cousin Ann turning a hand to help anybody,” said Little Josh.
“Well, I fancy you have heard the news that I am taking my wife and daughters abroad this month and I cannot keep the poor old lady any longer,” sighed Bob Bucknor.
“Sure, Bob, we think you’ve had too much of her already,” said Sister Sue’s husband, Timothy Graves, “but Sue says she can’t visit with us any more. The children are big enough now to demand separate rooms and our house is not very large—not as large as it used to be somehow. In old days people didn’t mind doubling up, but nobody wants to double up with Cousin Ann and her horses are a nuisance and that old Billy irritates the servants and—”
“My mother says an old ladies’ home is the only thing for her,” said David Throckmorton.
“So do all the women. But who’s going to bell the cat?” asked Big Josh.
“I reckon we’ll have to go in a body and speak in chorus,” suggested Little Josh. It222was thus decided, after much argument. All the cousins were willing to contribute something towards the support of the old lady, but nobody was willing or able to take her in his home.
“Of course, we must provide for old Billy, too.”
“Of course!”
“Well, after dinner all of you ride out to Buck Hill and there wait on the poor old thing and together we can break the news to her. It’s going to make me feel awfully bad,” declared Mr. Bob Bucknor.
“I reckon we’ll all feel bad, but none of us must weaken,” blustered Big Josh. “And while we are discussing family matters, how about this talk about that pretty Miss Judith Buck being a cousin?”
“The women folk have settled that. At least mine have; and since we are the closest neighbors there at Buck Hill—” began Bob Bucknor.
“You may be the closest neighbors, but you are not the closest kin. I’m for taking her into the clan. By golly, we haven’t got too many pretty women in our family to be turning any down. I tell you, I’m going to call on her. Owe her a party call anyhow.” Thus rumbled Big Josh.223
“Better not,” warned Mr. Bob Bucknor and then, since the clan were having dinner at the hotel where “you could” and a feeling of good cheer had begun to permeate the diners, Mr. Bucknor proceeded to tell the story, of course in the strictest confidence, about Tom Harbison and the milk can, all of which went to convince others beside Big Josh that Judith might prove a valuable acquisition to the family.
“I reckon she’s coped with worse than our women,” said Little Josh. “With poverty staring her in the face and old Dick Buck for a grandfather, she’s kept her head up and made a living and got a tidy bank account, so I hear. All by herself, too! I think I’ll call when you do, Big Josh, but I’ll fight shy of the milk cans.”
So it was voted that Judith was to be received into the family, Mr. Bob Bucknor making a mental reservation that he would not divulge the news to his wife and daughters until they were well out of Kentucky. He had strong hopes that European travel might soften the hearts of his daughters towards their pretty, red-haired cousin and neighbor.
“While we’ve got a little Dutch courage left, let’s go on out to Buck Hill and tackle Cousin Ann,” said Big Josh. “Now224remember, all at once and nobody backing out and coughing. Everybody speak up strong and all together.”
A handsome family of men they were, taken all in all—handsome and prosperous, good citizens, honorable, upright, courageous—but this thing of deliberately getting together to inform a poor old woman that no longer would their several homes be ready to receive her made them seem to themselves anything but admirable.
“Darn the women folks, I say!” rumbled Big Josh. “If they weren’t so selfish and bent on their own pleasure we would not have to be doing this miserable thing.”
“Perhaps if we had helped them a little with Cousin Ann they wouldn’t be kicking so,” humbly suggested Little Josh.
“Help them! Help them! How in Pete’s name could we help them any more? I am sure I have allowed Cousin Ann to give me a lamp mat every Christmas since I was born and my attic is full of her hoop skirts.” A smile went the rounds and Big Josh subsided.
Buck Hill never looked more hospitable or attractive, as the cousins speeded up the driveway—two cars full of Kentucky blue blood. The gently rolling meadows dotted with grazing cattle, the great friendly beech trees on the225shaven lawn, the monthly roses in the garden, the ever-blooming honeysuckle clambering over the summer-house seemed to cry out, “Welcome to all!”
“Gee! Poor Cousin Ann!” muttered one. “No wonder she likes to stay here.”
An unwonted silence fell on the group, as they tiptoed up the front walk. They could not have said why they walked so quietly, but had they been called on to serve as pall bearers to their aged relative they would not have entered into the duty with any greater solemnity.
Aunt Em’ly appeared at the front door.
“Lawsamussy, Marse Bob, you done give me a turn,” she gasped, bobbing a courtesy to the assembled gentlemen. “Is you done et?”
“Yes, yes, Aunt Em’ly, we have had dinner, but we should like to—”
“Yassir! I’ll git the ice cracked in no time an’ sen’ Kizzie fer some mint.”
“Not yet, Aunt Em’ly,” faltered her master miserably. “A little later, perhaps, but now—”
“I know! You done had a po’ dinner an’ come home fer some ’spectable victuals. It ain’t gonter take me long.”
“Not at all, Aunt Em’ly, we had an excellent dinner, but now—”226
“Call Miss Ann Peyton,” blustered Big Josh. “Tell her her cousins all want to see her,” and then he swelled his chest with pride. He for one wasn’t going to back out.
“Miss Ann done gone,” grinned Aunt Em’ly.
“Gone where?” they asked in chorus.
“Gawd knows! She an’ ol’ Billy an’ the hosses done took theyselves off this mawnin’ jes’ ’bout five minutes after my white folks lef.”
“Didn’t she say where she was going?” asked Mr. Bucknor.
“She never said ‘peep turkey!’ ter man or beast. She lef’ a dime fer me an’ one fer Kizzie an’ she went a sailin’ out, an’ although I done my bes’ ter git that ol’ Billy ter talk he ain’t done give me no satisfaction, but jes’ a little back talk, an’ then he fotch hisself off, walkin’ low an’ settin’ high an’ I ain’t seed hide or har of them since. Miss Ann done lef’ a note fer you an’ Miss Milly, though.”
The note proved to be nothing more than Miss Ann’s usual formal farewell and did not mention her proposed destination.
“By the great jumping jingo, I hope she didn’t try my lane with her old carriage!” exclaimed Big Josh. “That lane, with the women in my family at the end of it, would be the undoing of poor old Cousin Ann. May I use227your phone, Bob? I think I’ll find out if she’s there before I go home.”
Every man rang up his home and every man breathed a sigh of relief when he found that Miss Ann had not arrived. Wild and varied were their surmises concerning where she had gone.
“This is the most disgraceful thing that ever happened in the family,” declared Timothy Graves. “Of course I know I am only law-kin, but still I feel the disgrace.”
“You needn’t be so proud of yourself, Tim, because you were some kin already before you married Sister Sue,” chided Brother Tom. “I can’t see that you are not in on it too.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Yes, but you said it because you really felt it in your favor that you were law-kin,” put in Little Josh.
“Nonsense!”
“Come, come,” pleaded Mr. Bob Bucknor, “rowing with each other isn’t finding out where Cousin Ann has gone. Kizzie! Aunt Em’ly!” he shouted, “get that cracked ice and mint now. Come on, you fellows, and let’s see if we can find any inspiration in the bottom of a frosted goblet.”
228CHAPTER XXIIA Great Transformation
It was unbelievable that a lumbering coach, with two fat horses, an old lady in a hoop skirt and a bow-legged coachman, could have disappeared from the face of the earth. Nevertheless, this seemed the case. Nobody knew where Cousin Ann had gone. Telephones were ringing into the night in vain attempts to trace the old lady. It had never made much difference to anyone before where Miss Ann had gone. For many years she had been leaving one relation’s home and arriving at another’s, and the comings and goings of Cousin Ann had created but a small ripple in family affairs. She had never deigned to say where next she intended to visit, so why now should the cousins be so disturbed over her whereabouts?
“I am so afraid something has happened to her,” said Mr. Bob Bucknor. “I’ll never forgive myself if Cousin Ann is in trouble, when I have literally driven her from my house.”
“But, my dear, you have not driven her from229your home,” comforted his wife. “You had only intended to inform her that we were planning a trip abroad and she would have to visit somewhere else until arrangements could be made for her to be established in an old ladies’ home. There was nothing cruel in that.”
“Ah, but Cousin Ann is so proud and Buck Hill has always been a refuge for her.”
The other cousins were likewise agitated. For Cousin Ann to have disappeared just as they were contemplating wounding her made them think that they had already wounded her. “Poor old lady!” was all they could say, and all of them said it until their women-folk were exceedingly bored with the remark.
Mr. Bob Bucknor determined to send for Jeff, if something definite was not heard of the missing cousin within the next twenty-four hours. He vaguely felt that it might be time for the law to step in and help in the search.
In the meantime Miss Ann was very happy in the house built by Ezra Knight; and Uncle Billy was even happier in the cabin built by the Bucks of old. The Peyton coach stood peacefully in the carriage house, with the bees buzzing sleepily, free to come and go in their subway nest somewhere under the back seat. Cupid and Puck wandered in the blue-grass230meadow, content as though they had been put to graze in the Elysian fields.
The first night under the roof of her newly recognized cousins was a novel one for Miss Ann. She had gone to bed not in the least bored, but very tired—tired from actual labor. In the first place, she had helped wipe all the many dishes accumulated from the motormen’s dinners and then put them away. That task completed, she had become interested in Judith’s work of mounting photographs—an order lately received and one that must be rushed.
“Want to help?” Judith had asked, and soon deft old fingers were vying with young ones.
“Why, Cousin Ann, you have regular fairy fingers,” said Judith, and the old lady had blushed with delight. They worked until the task was completed, while Mrs. Buck nodded over “Holy Living and Dying.”
In the morning, when Judith made her early way to the kitchen, she found a fire burning briskly in the stove, the kettle ready to boil and the wood box filled. Uncle Billy, smiling happily, was seated in the doorway. Judith thanked him heartily and he assured her he liked to help white ladies, but didn’t hold much to helping his own race.231
“They’s ongrateful an’ proudified an’ the mo’ you holps ’em the mo’ they shifts. Me’n Miss Ann has been visitin so long we ain’t entered much inter housekeepin’, but somehow we seem so sot an’ statiumnary now that it comes nachul ter both er us ter len’ a han’.”
“That’s nice,” laughed Judith. “I do hope you and Cousin Ann and Cupid and Puck will all feel at home. I wish you would keep your eye open for a nice, respectable woman who could help me, now that I have so many dinners to serve to the trolley men.”
“I sho’ will—an’, Miss Judy, I’m wonderin’ if you ain’t got a little bitser blue cloth what I mought patch my pants with. If my coattails wa’n’t so long I wouldn’t be fitten ter go ’mongst folks.”
After some discussion with her mother, in which the girl tried to make Mrs. Buck see the difference between saving and hoarding, Judith finally produced for old Billy many leftovers of maternal and paternal grandfathers.
“Mumsy, you are a trump. Now, you see you saved these things so someone deserving could use them, but if they had stayed in the attic until the moths had eaten them up while old Billy went ragged then that would have been wasteful hoarding.”232
“I’m not minding so much about your Grandfather Buck’s things, but somehow it seems a desecration for that old darkey to be wearing your Grandfather Knight’s trousers.”
“That’s what makes me say you are a trump, Mumsy. I know you look upon those broadcloth pants as a kind of sacred trust, and I just love you to death for giving in about them.”
“And my father was tall and straight of limb, too,” wailed Mrs. Buck. “It seems worse because old Billy’s legs are so short and crooked.”
Crooked they may have been, but short they were not. By the time the broadcloth trousers traveled the circuitous route of the old man’s legs everything came out even.
“Fit me like they was made fer me,” he exclaimed, showing himself to Judith.
“Perhaps they were,” mused Judith. “And now the coat!”
It was a rusty coat, long of tail and known at the time of its pristine glory as a “Prince Albert.” Ezra Knight had kept it for funerals and other ceremonious occasions.
“Is there ary hat?”
There was—a high silk hat with a broad brim. Mrs. Buck rather thought it was one233that had belonged to her grandfather and not her father. At any rate, it rested comfortably on Billy’s cotton white wool.
“Now, Uncle Billy, trim your beard and nobody will know you,” suggested Judith. So trim his beard he did, much to the improvement of his appearance.
“Reform number one!” said Judith to herself.
Miss Ann slept the sleep of industry that first night at the Bucks’, and the sun was high when she opened her tired old eyes. She lay still for a moment, wondering where she was. This room was different from any of the other guest chambers she had occupied. There was a kind of austerity in the quaint old furniture that was lacking in the bedrooms where modern taste held sway. Nothing had been taken from or added to the Bucks’ guest chamber since Grandmother Knight had reverently placed there her best highboy and her finest mahogany bed and candle stand. On the mantel was the model of a ship that tradition said the Norse sailor had carved, and on the walls steel engravings of Milton and Newton—Milton looking up at the stars seeking the proper rhymes, and Newton with eyes cast down searching out the power of gravity from the ground.234
Miss Ann looked on her surroundings and smiled peacefully. She thought over the happenings of yesterday and again she realized that it was a pleasant thing to be wanted. There was a knock at the door. Billy, no doubt with hot water and maybe an early cup of coffee.
“Come in!”
It was Judith bearing a tray of breakfast.
“Not a bit of use in your getting up early, Cousin Ann, but every reason for you to have breakfast while it is fresh and hot, so I just brought it in to you. I often make my mother stay in bed for breakfast if she is not feeling very strong. There is nothing like starting the day with something in your tummy. It is a lovely day with a touch of autumn in the air. I do hope you slept.”
Judith chattered on, ignoring the fact that Miss Ann was evidently embarrassed that she had been caught minus her wig. The girl opened wide the shutters, letting the sunlight stream into the room.
“Oh, Cousin Ann, what wonderful hair you have! Why it is like the driven snow and as soft as silk! Please, please let me arrange it for you sometimes. I don’t know whether you ought to wear it piled on your head in coils and puffs, like a French beauty of way back235yonder, or parted in the middle and waved on each side and drawn back into a loose knot.”
“Oh, child, you can’t think gray hair pretty.”
“Why, it is the loveliest thing in the world. If I had hair like yours I’d never cover it up. You will let me try to dress it won’t you? I just love to touch it,” and Judith fondled one of the silvered plats.
“Yes,” faltered the old lady. How long had it been since anyone but old Billy had complimented her? And when had anyone said her hair might be soft to the touch? Wigs do not last forever and Miss Ann had begun to realize that before many weeks a new one would be imperative. A new wig meant even greater scrimping than usual for Billy and his mistress. Funds must be very carefully handled when such an outlay became necessary. It was next in importance to a new horse, and greater than renewing a wheel on the coach. She had never dreamed that she might get along without a wig. She had begun wearing a wig many years ago, when her hair turned gray in spots. She had always considered dyed hair rather vulgar and so had resorted to a wig and, true to her character for keeping up a custom, she had never discarded the wig, although her hair had long since turned snow-white from root to end.236
“Reform number two,” Judith said to herself as she viewed her handiwork on Cousin Ann’s hair. It was decided to part it in the middle and wave it on the sides and sweetly the old lady’s face was framed in the soft, silver locks.
“You look different from yourself, but lovely,” cried Judith. “You make me think of a young person trying to look old.”
She might have added: “Instead of an old person trying to look young,” but she did not.
237CHAPTER XXIIIThe Lost Is Found
Two days passed and still the Bucknor clan was in ignorance of the whereabouts of Cousin Ann. It had so happened that Judith had been busy at home and had not gone into Ryeville for several days and nobody had called at her home, although since the famous debut party the Bucks had many more visitors than formerly.
Cousin Ann could not have concealed herself from the world more effectually had she tried. Concealment was far from her thoughts, however. She had no idea that a hue and cry would be raised for her. The Fates, in the shapes of Billy, Cupid and Puck, had taken her destiny in hand and landed her with this golden girl, who wanted her and loved her and petted her and made her feel at home. Here she would stay. How long? She would not let herself dwell on that subject.
What the rest of the family would think of her claiming kin with the hitherto impossible238Bucks made little difference to the old lady. She determined never to divulge that old Billy had engineered the visit, but intended, when the question came up with her kinsmen, to let it be understood that she, Ann Peyton, had ruled that Judith Buck belonged to the family and had as good a right to the name of Bucknor as any person bearing the name.
The old men of Ryeville were seated in tilted chairs on the hotel porch. The little touch of autumn in the air made it rather pleasant when the sun sought out their feet resting on the railing.
“What’s this I hear about the disappearance of Miss Ann Peyton?” asked Major Fitch. “Someone told me that she has not been heard of now for several days and Bob Bucknor is just about having a fit over it. He and Big Josh are scouring the country for her, after having burnt up all the telephone wires in the county trying to locate her.”
“It’s true,” chuckled Colonel Crutcher. “My granddaughter says Mildred Bucknor is raising a rumpus because her father is saying he can’t go abroad until Cousin Ann is found. First, he can’t go because the old lady is visiting him and now he can’t go because she isn’t visiting him.”239
“Well, a big, old ramshackledy rockaway like Miss Ann’s, with a pair of horses fat enough to eat and the bow-leggedest coachman in Kentucky, to say nothing of Miss Ann herself with her puffy red wig and hoop skirts as wide as a barn door, couldn’t disappear in a rat hole. They must be somewhere and they must have gone along the road to get where they were going. Certainly they haven’t passed this way or we’d have seen them,” said Judge Middleton.
“I hear tell Bob Bucknor has sent for Jeff to come and advise him,” drawled Pete Barnes. “And I also hear tell that the Bucknor men were gettin’ ready to let poor ol’ Miss Ann know that she was due to settle herself in an ol’ ladies’ home. They were cookin’ it up that day they all had dinner here last week.”
“Yes, and what’s more, I hear our Judy gal knocked that Tom Harbison down the hill with a milk bucket,” laughed Pete. “I got it straight from Big Josh himself.”
So the old men gossiped, basking in the autumn sunshine. They still quarreled over the outcome of the war between the states, but now they had a fresh topic of never-ending interest to discuss and that was their own debut party. Congratulations were ever in order on their240extreme cleverness in giving the ball.
Pete Barnes was ever declaring, “It was my idee, though, my idee! And didn’t we launch our little girl, though? I hear tell she is going to be asked to join the girls’ club. That’s a secret. I believe the girls are going to wait until Mildred and Nan Bucknor are on the rolling deep. As for the young men—they are worse than bears about a bee tree. Judy won’t have much to do with them though. But you needn’t tell me she doesn’t like it.”
“Sure she does. She’s too healthy-minded not to like beaux. There she comes now! I can see her car way up the street—just a blue speck,” cried Judge Middleton.
“Sure enough! There she is! She’s got her mother in with her.”
“That’s not Mrs. Buck. Mrs. Buck always sits in Judy’s car as though she were scared to death—and she hasn’t white hair either.”
“Hi, Miss Judy!”
“Hi, yourself!” and Judith stopped her car in front of the hotel.
“Boys, that’s Miss Ann Peyton!” cried Major Fitch. “Miss Ann or I’ll eat my hat!”
“She’s already eaten her wig. No wonder we didn’t know her! And she’s left off her hoops!” cried the Judge.241
The old men removed their feet from railing, dropped their chairs to all fours, sprang up and, standing in a row, made a low bow to the occupants of the little blue car. Then they trooped off the porch and gathered in a circle around the ladies.
“The last I heard of you, Miss Ann, was that you were lost,” said Judge Middleton.
“Not a bit of it,” declared Judith. “She is found.”
“Yes—and I think I’ve found myself, too,” said Miss Ann softly. “I am visiting my dear young cousin, Judith Buck.”
“At my urgent invitation,” explained Judith.
“I am staying on at her invitation, but I followed my usual habit and went uninvited,” said the old lady firmly.
The old men listened in amazement. What was this? Miss Ann Peyton openly claiming relationship with old Dick Buck’s granddaughter and riding around—minus wig and hoops—with the new-found cousin in a home-made blue car! Miss Ann was meek but happy.
“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Pete Barnes.
“What do you suppose he meant by saying they thought you were lost?” Judith asked on the way home from Ryeville. “Didn’t they know you were coming to me?”242
“No,” faltered Miss Ann. “I seldom divulge where I intend to visit next. That is my affair,” she added with a touch of her former hauteur—a manner she had discarded with the wig and hoop skirt. Wild horses could not drag from her the fact that she had not known herself where she was going.
“That’s all right, Cousin Ann, but if you ever get tired of staying at my house I am going to be hurt beyond measure if you go off without telling me where you are going. Promise me you’ll never treat me that way.”
“I promise. I have never told the others because it has never made any difference to them.”
When the blue car disappeared up the street the old men of Ryeville went into conference.
“Don’t that beat bobtail?”
“Do you fellows realize that means our gal is recognized for good and all? Miss Ann may be played out as a visitor with her kinfolks, but she’s still head forester of the family tree,” said Judge Middleton.
“Don’t you reckon we’d better ’phone Buck Hill or Big Josh or some of the family that Miss Ann is found?” asked Pete Barnes.
“No, let’s let ’em worry a while longer. They’ve been kinder careless of Miss Ann to243have mislaid her, and mighty snobbish with our gal not to have claimed kin with her long ago. My advice is let ’em worry, let ’em worry,” decreed Major Fitch.
Miss Ann wasn’t lost very long, however. That same evening, when Judith made her daily trip to the trolley stop with the men’s dinner, Jefferson Bucknor stepped from the rear platform of the six-thirty.
“In time to carry your ‘empties’ for you,” he said, shaking Judith’s hand with a warmth that his casual greeting did not warrant. Judith surrendered the basket, but held on to the empty milk can.
“Your trusty weapon,” said Jeff, and they both laughed. “Have you knocked anybody down lately?” the young man asked.
“Not many, but I am always prepared with my milk can. It is a deadly weapon, with or without buttermilk.”
“I wonder if you are anywhere near so glad to see me as I am to see you. I have been sticking to business and trying to make believe that Louisville is as nice as Ryeville, and Louisville girls are as beautiful as they are reputed to be, and that the law is the most interesting thing in the world, but somehow I can’t fool myself. Are you glad to see me?”244
“Of course,” said Judith.
“I wish you wouldn’t swing that milk can so vigorously. I think a cousin might be allowed to ask if you are glad to see him without being in danger of having to take the same medicine Tom Harbison had to swallow. I’ve come home on a rather sad mission, in a way, and still I wanted to see my little cousin so much I can’t help making a kind of lark of it. I am really worried very much, and should go to Buck Hill immediately, but if you don’t mind, I’ll hang around while you get the seven o’clock dinners packed and then help you carry them.”
Judith did not mind at all. “I hope nobody at Buck Hill is ill,” she said.
“No, but my father is in a great stew over old Cousin Ann Peyton. She is lost and he seems to feel I can find her. Why, I don’t know, if he and Big Josh can’t, even with the help of the marshal.”
“I am sure you can,” declared Judith demurely, and Jeff thought happily how agreeable it was to have someone besides a father have such faith in his ability.
“You must come in and wait,” insisted Judith. “There is a fire in the dining-room. It is cold for September and a little fire towards evening is pleasant.”245
Jeff entered the home of his newly claimed cousin with a feeling of some embarrassment. It seemed strange that he had lived on the adjoining farm all his early years and that this was the first time he had been in the Bucks’ house. There was a chaste New England charm about the dining-room that appealed to him. It was a fit background for the tall, white-haired old lady who was busily engaged in setting the table as the young people entered. She was smiling and humming a gay little minuet, as she straightened table mats and arranged forks and knives in exactly the proper relation to each other and the teaspoons.
Stooping and placing wood on the fire was an old negro man. His back was strangely familiar to Jeff and there was something about the lines of the white-haired old lady that made him stare. She was like Cousin Ann but couldn’t be she. Not only the snowy hair and the simple, straight skirt of her gown were not those of the lost cousin, but the fact that she was engaged in household duties was even more convincing of a case of mistaken identity. It was old Billy that had flashed through his mind, when he noticed the fire maker, but old Billy never engaged in any form of domestic labor any more than his mistress.246
“Someone to see you, Cousin Ann,” said Judith, putting her arm around the old lady’s waist.
Jeff choked and gasped.
That evening the telephone wires were again kept hot by the Bucknors and their many kinsmen. Everybody who had been informed of Miss Ann’s being lost must be informed of her being found. Big and Little Josh drove over to Buck Hill to hear the story of Jeff’s discovery.
“And what were you doing at the Bucks’?” Big Josh asked Jeff.
“I was calling on Miss Judith. In fact, I had jumped off the trolley at that stop because I hoped she would be there,” said Jeff, his face flushing but his eyes holding a steady light as he looked into those of his father’s cousin. He even raised his voice a little so as to make sure that everyone in the room might hear him.
“Well, well!” exploded Big Josh. “You have beat me to it. I was planning to go to-morrow to call on our Cousin Judith Buck. You know she is our cousin, Jeff—not too close, but just close enough. She has been voted into the family when we sat in solemn conclave and now to think of her proving she247is kin before we had time to let her know of her election—prove it by taking poor Cousin Ann in and making her welcome! By jingo, she is a more worthy member of the clan than any woman we have in the family. I was all for taking her in because she is so gol darned pretty and up-and-coming. I must confess I wouldn’t have been so eager about it if she had been jimber-jawed and cross-eyed, but, by the great jumping jingo, I’d say be my long-lost cousin now if she had a wooden leg, a glass eye and china teeth!”
“Cousin Ann has left off her wig and her hoop skirts, too,” said Jeff, “and old Billy has trimmed his beard, and, what is more, both of them were busy helping—Cousin Ann setting the table and Uncle Billy bringing in wood and mending the fire.”
“Did Judith Buck make them do it,” asked Mildred. “She was a great boss at school.”
“That I don’t know, but they seemed very happy in being able to help. Mrs. Buck told me she was glad to have a visitor. Her daughter is away so much and she gets lonely. Old Uncle Billy is established in a cabin behind the house—”
“The one old Dick Buck lived in,” interrupted Big Josh.248
“And the old man told me he was planning to do the fall ploughing with Cupid and Puck. He says they have plenty of pull left in them and my private opinion is that Cousin Ann’s old coach will not stand another trip.”
“See here,” spoke Little Josh, who was the practical member of the family, “this is all very well, but we Bucknors can’t sit back and let this little Judy Buck support our old cousin. The girl works night and day for a living and to try to pull the farm her Grandfather Knight left her and her mother back into some kind of fertility. Old Billy and Cousin Ann may set the table and make the fires, but that isn’t bringing any money into the business. We’ve got to reimburse the girl somehow.”
“She wouldn’t stand for it,” said Jeff. “She is as proud as can be to be able to have Cousin Ann visit her.”
“Well, then we’ll have to find a way that won’t hurt her pride. Let’s send things to Cousin Ann. It will please the old lady and at the same time help on our Cousin Judith.”
“What kind of things?” asked Mr. Bob Bucknor, who had been singularly quiet and thoughtful ever since his mind was relieved as to his cousin’s not being lost.
“The kind of things neighbors and kinsmen249do for one another in our state and all other states where neighbors are neighborly and where blood is thicker than water, and blue blood thicker than any other kind,” exclaimed Big Josh. “When you kill mutton don’t you send me a quarter? Well, send one to the Bucks instead. When your potato crop was a failure owing to the bugs getting ahead of you, didn’t I share with you? Well, let me share with this girl. When I harvest, aren’t all the relations ready to send hands to help if I need help? Who ever helped Judith Buck?
“I bet your smokehouse is full and running over this minute. I know mine is. Well, let them run over in the right channel. We can’t do enough for this young cousin. Gee, man, just to think of our being spared the humiliation of having to go to Cousin Ann and, tell her that we couldn’t look after her any longer! I break out in a cold sweat whenever I think of how near we came to it.
“If Cupid and Puck can’t pull the plough, how about sending your tractor over and getting Cousin Judith’s few acres broken up for her in three shakes of a dead sheep’s tail? I’d do it if I were closer. Why, jiminy crickets! We owe her an everlasting debt of gratitude just for persuading Cousin Ann to step out of her250wig and hoops, and another one for making that old Billy trim his beard. I believe his beard was what made the other darkeys hate him so, and I know if it hadn’t have been for Cousin Ann’s hoop skirt and wig she would have been helping the women folk around the house long before this. What they had against her was that she was always company wherever she stayed. I tell you, give me a red-headed girl for managing!”
251CHAPTER XXIVBlessings Begin to Flow
“Well, I say it’s a good thing these cousins of yours didn’t decide sooner to recognize you, Judy, because if they had we wouldn’t have had a single chair with a bottom left in it and the hooked rugs your Grandmother Knight brought to Kentucky would have been nothing but holes,” declared Mrs. Buck. “I never saw so much company in my born days and constant setting wears out chairs and constant rocking wears out rugs.
“I don’t say as it isn’t nice to have company. I’ve been lonesome, in a way, all my life, because my mother and father weren’t much hands at mixing, feeling themselves to be kind of different from the folks here in Kentucky, and then I married young, and trouble came early, and my poor dear husband’s father wasn’t the kind to attract the kind of people my mother felt were our equals—but now, sakes alive, never a day passes but it isn’t cousin this and252cousin that, coming to call or ringing the ’phone or sending some kind of present to Miss Ann.
“What do they expect Miss Ann to do with a bushel of winter onions and a barrel of potatoes and a keg of cider and a barrel of flour and six sides of bacon, two jowls and three hams, besides two barrels of apples and a hind quarter of the prettiest mutton I’ve seen for many a day? This morning a truck drove up with enough wood to last us half through the winter—the best kind of oak and pine mixed and all cut stove length ready for splitting. That old Billy is mighty nice about splitting the wood and bringing it in. He’s the most respectful colored person I ever saw and the only one I’d ever have around.”
Mrs. Buck paused for breath and then proceeded: “While you were off teaching to-day somebody Miss Ann called Cousin Betty Throckmorton came to call and brought two daughters and a grandchild. I was mighty sorry for them to miss you and I told them so. I think Mrs. Throckmorton rather thought I ought to have said I was sorry for you to miss her, but being as she had come to see you and not you to see her and being as you are a sight better looking than she is or her daughters or the grandchild, I put it the other way. Anyhow,253she was a very fine lady and couldn’t say enough in praise of some of our furniture.
“She asked me where the secretary in the parlor came from and when I told her it belonged to my mother’s side of the house—the Fairbankses—and came over on the third trip of the Mayflower she said no doubt she and I could claim relationship, as she, too, was a Fairbanks. And then she said to Miss Ann that people in the south paid so much more attention to relationship than they did in the north and no doubt she was as close to me as Miss Ann was to you.
“Then I got out that book your Grandmother Knight set such store by, with all of her family written down in it and a picture of the old original Fairbanks home, and Mrs. Throckmorton nearly fell over herself reading it and hunting out where she belonged in it and finally she found her line and then, sure enough, she and I are closer relations than you and Miss Ann. Then she called me Cousin Prudence and asked me to call her Cousin Betty. I’m afraid I can never get the courage to do that, but it does kind of tickle me for them to be claiming relationship with me too. We are the same folks we have always been.”
“So we are, Mumsy, but perhaps the other254fellow has had a change of heart. Does Cousin Ann like having so many callers?”
“Indeed she does, and she never stops telling them what a fine girl you are. Sometimes I can’t believe she is really talking about my little Judy, she makes you out so wonderful. Mrs. Throckmorton—Cousin Betty—said she had got a letter from Mrs. Robert Bucknor, written from Monte Carlo, telling all about the good times they are having. It seems that that Mildred has caught a real beau. Cousin Betty’s daughter said she hoped he’d be more faithful than Tom Harbison, and Cousin Betty hushed up. Evidently she didn’t want me to know about Tom Harbison—not that I want to know. This beau is a count and rich and middle aged. It looks as though it might be a match. All of the ladies, even Miss Ann, thought it would be a good thing if Mildred married rich and lived abroad. They didn’t want anything but good fortune for her, but I could tell they’d like to have her good fortune fall in foreign parts.
“At first Miss Ann was right stand-offish with Mrs. Throckmorton, but that lady went right up to her and kissed her and said, ‘See here, Cousin Ann, you might just as well be glad to see me, because I am very glad to see255you, and to see you looking so well and so comfortable and I’m also glad to see your pretty white hair and to know you’ve got some legs.’ And Miss Ann laughed and said, ‘Thank you, Cousin Betty,’ and then they began to visit as sweet as you please. Old Billy went out and made the colored chauffeur go back and see his house and of all the big talking you ever heard, that old man did the biggest. I came back to the pantry to get out a little wine and cake for the company and I could hear him just holding forth.”
“Poor old Uncle Billy! He is proud of having a house,” laughed Judith. “His turkey red curtains are up now and his geranium slips started. He has put on a fresh coat of whitewash, within and without, and his floor is scrubbed so clean you could really make up biscuit on it. It is gratifying, Mumsy, that we have been able to make two old people as happy as we have Cousin Ann and old Uncle Billy. I only hope Cousin Ann doesn’t bother you.”
“Lands sakes, child, she is a heap of company for me and she is a great help. I don’t see how such an old person can step around so lively. She stirred up a cake this morning. She says she has been clipping recipes out of256newspapers for years and years but they have always made company of her wherever she has visited before and she has never been able to try any of her recipes. Her cake has got a little sad streak in it, owing to the fire getting low while it was baking, but that wasn’t to say her fault altogether, as I told her I’d look after the fire while she picked out walnuts for the icing.
“We had a right good time though while the cake-making was going on and Mr. Big Josh Bucknor came to pass the time of day. He could not stop but a minute but he nearly split his sides laughing at Miss Ann in a big apron, turning her hand to cooking. She laughed, too, and made as if she was going to hit him with the rolling pin, like that woman in the newspaper named Mrs. Jiggs. Mr. Big Josh brought some fine fish as a present. He said he’d been fishing and had caught more than he could use.”
That evening, after the dishes were washed, Judith, instead of beginning on the photographic work as was her custom, sat silent with folded hands, her head resting against the back of the winged chair. Her eyes were closed and her face was tense.
“Child, you look so tired,” said Miss Ann.257“You do too much. I am afraid my being here puts more on you than you can stand.”
In all her many decades of visiting, that was the first time Miss Ann had ever suggested to a hostess that she might be troublesome. Judith insisted she was not tired and that Miss Ann was a help and no trouble, but the old lady could but see that there were violet shadows under the girl’s eyes and that the contour of her cheek was not so rounded as it had been in the summer.
That night, when Billy came to her room to see if she needed anything before retiring—an unfailing custom of the old man—Miss Ann was on the point of discussing with him the evident fatigue of their beloved young hostess, but before she could open the subject Billy said:
“Miss Ann, I done got a big favor ter ax you. I ain’t ’lowin’ ter imconvemience you none, but I air gonter go on a little trip. It air goin’ on ter fifty years sence I had a sho’ ’nuf holiday, bein’ as I ain’t never been ter say free ter leave you when we’ve been a visitin’ roun’, kase I been always kinder feard you mought need ol’ Billy whilst you wa’n’t ter say ’zactly at home, but somehows now you seem ter kinder b’long here with Miss Judy an’258her maw an’ my feets air been eatchin’ so much lately th’ain’t nothin’ fer me ter do but follow the signs an’ go on a trip.”
“But, Billy—” began Miss Ann.
“Yassum, I ain’t gonter be gone long. It ain’t gonter be mo’n three or fo’ days, or maybe five or six, but anyhow I’s gonter be back here in three shakes er a dead sheep’s tail. I kin see, as well as you kin, that Miss Judy air kinder tuckered out what with teachin’ an’ servin’ up them suppers to the street cyar men. I’m a thinkin’ that when I goes on my trip I mought fin’ a good cook ter holp Miss Judy out. Her maw am p’intedly ’posed ter nigger gals, but she ain’t called on ter be. Me’n you knows by lookin’ on with one eye that Mrs. Buck air mo’ hindrance than help ter Miss Judy. You ain’t gonter put no bans on my goin’ air you, Miss Ann? Looks like it ain’t ’zactly grabby fer me ter git a holiday onct every fifty years.”
“Well, if—” Miss Ann tried again.
“Yassum, I done filled all the wood boxes in the house an’ on the po’ch. I done split up enough kindlin’ ter las’ a week. I done scrubbed the kitchen an’ cleaned out the cow shed an’ put fresh straw in Cupid and Puck’s stalls. I done pick a tu’key fer Miss Judy an’ blacked259the stove. I ain’t lef nothin’ undone, an’ she ain’t gonter have no trouble till ol’ Billy gits back. I done already ax her what she thinks ’bout my goin’ on a trip an’ she say fer me ter git a move on me ’kase I needs it an’ what’s mo’ she done rooted out’n the attic a top coat an’ a pair er boots an’ I’m a gonter go off dressed up as good as a corpse.”
So Billy departed on his trip. When he had been gone four days and no message from him had come, Miss Ann was plainly a little uneasy about the old man.
“You ain’t called on to be worried,” said Mrs. Buck. “That old man can take care of himself all right. I must say I never expected the time to come when I’d confess to missing a darkey, but Uncle Billy is a heap of help around the place. He saves Judy a lot of work—things she never would let me do. I certainly hope nothing has happened to him.”
Nothing had—at least nothing that his mistress or Mrs. Buck could have feared. When Judith went to the kitchen on Sunday morning, the one day she allowed herself to relax, she found the fire crackling in the stove and the kettle filled and ready to boil. Standing by the table, rolling out biscuit, was a small, old mulatto woman, wiry and erect. She was260dressed in a stiff, purple calico dress and on her head was a bandanna handkerchief, the ends tied in front and standing up like rabbit ears.
Uncle Billy looked at Judith and grinned sheepishly. “Miss Judy, this air Mandy!”
“How do you do, Aunt Mandy? I am so glad you have come to help me. You have come for that, have you not?”
The old woman continued to roll the dough and cut out the biscuit with a brisk motion, at the same time looking keenly at Judith.
“Yes, I reckon that’s what I come for mostly, and at the same time I come somewhat to be holped myself. As soon as I git these here biscuits in the oven I’ll tell you what Billy air too shamefaced to own up to.”
She whisked the biscuits into the oven and then proceeded, “Billy air kinder new to this business, but bein’ as it’s my fifth I’m kinder used to it. Billy an’ me done got ma’id yesterday.”
“Got what?”
“Ma’id! I’m his wedded wife. He done come down to Jefferson County courtin’, an’ bein’ as I done buried my fo’th jes’ las’ year I up’n says yes as quick as a flash. I reckon Billy’s been ’lowin’ that so long as he couldn’t be my fust, owin’ to delays an’ happenin’s,261he’d make out to be my las’. I been kinder expectin’ that Billy’d come along for fifty-odd years an’ every time I’d git a chance to git ma’id I’d kinder put it off, thinkin’ he mought turn up, an’ every time I’d bury a husband I’d say to myself, ‘Now maybe this time Billy’ll be comin’ along.’ I been namin’ my chilluns arfter him off an’ on. There’s Bill an’ Billy an’ Bildad an’ William an’ Willy an’ one er my gals is named Willymeeter. Of course I knowed he wa’ kinder ’sponsible fer Miss Ann, an’ I ain’t never blamed him none, but I sho’ wa’ glad ter see him when he come walkin’ in las’ Wednesday an’ jes’ tol’ me he wa’ a needin’ me an’ he had a home er his own with a po’ch an’ all. An’ so we got ma’id.”
Old Billy had realized his dream at last—a house he could call his own, with a porch and geraniums growing on it, and married to Mandy. It mattered not to him that he was her fifth venture in matrimony.
“Come next summer, we’ll have a box of portulac a bloomin’ befo’ the house,” he said to Judith. “I’m pretty nigh scairt ter be gittin’ so many blessings ter onct. Sometimes I kinder pinch myself ter see if I ain’t daid an’ gone ter Heaben.”