Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine;Turkey gobbler come up from behin'An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vineIn the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.
Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine;Turkey gobbler come up from behin'An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vineIn the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.
Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine;Turkey gobbler come up from behin'An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vineIn the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.
Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine;
Turkey gobbler come up from behin'
An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vine
In the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.
Judith pirouetting about, would sing the song after him, but with the correct time and tune.
"Seems like you c'n beat yer dad at singin', Judy," Bill would say proudly. "I never was one that could hang onto a tune. After a bit, somehaow, it'd allus git away from me. Hand me them there pinchers—the little uns with the shiny ends onto 'em."
Judith liked to work around the mules and was soon entrusted with the task of leading them to water and pitching hay into their manger. In the stable she would get down the curry brush and comb from the beam where Bill kept them and currythem down with many shouts of "Whoa, ye bugger!" and "Git araound there naow!" When there was an errand to do at the neighbor's, she would ride Tom or Bob barebacked, guiding the old mule proudly with tightly held bridle reins.
She liked to go with her father in the spring wagon when he went to Clayton or Sadieville or took corn to the mill to be ground. The clear morning sunshine, the sweet air, the life of the woods and fields all about them mingled exultantly with the rattle of the wagon as it jolted over the ruts in the dirt road, the strong, horsey smell of the mules and the grinding creak of the brake as Tom and Bob held back on the steep hillsides. Perched beside her father on the seat, she insisted on driving and was indignant when Bill would take the lines from her hands at the top of a steep hill or on the approach of another team.
Whenever they met a neighbor or relative—and almost everybody they met was a neighbor or relative—Bill would rein up the mules, the other team would pull up alongside, and there would be a long spell of roadside visiting. There would not be much said, but it would take a long time to say it; and Judith would sometimes grow impatient.
"Dad, why do you stop so long an' talk to folks on the road?" she would ask.
"Why-ee, I dunno. I allus done so ever sence I was a boy, an' my dad allus done so afore me. I like to know haow folks is a-comin' on. You wouldn't have me drive right on with nuthin but a 'Howdy' would you? 'Twouldn't be neighborly."
The mill was a mile or so beyond the village on the bank of a pleasant little stream which furnished it with water power. It was built of logs mortared with mud, and grass grew in the chinks. It was a very small mill the single business of which was to grind corn into meal for the corn cakes of the neighborhood. When Judith and her father would drive up, everything would be silent; not a sign of life but the turning wheel and perhaps a chicken pecking along the path or a pigeon cooing from the roof.
"Hey, Dave! Hey, Dave!" Bill would call, as he tied the mules to the hitching post. Presently Dave Fields, the miller, would come hobbling down the path from his house which stood a few rods away hidden among locust trees. He was a shriveled little old man with one leg shorter than the other from rheumatism and a pair of merry blue eyes twinkling from under bushy white eyebrows.
"Waal, howdy, Bill. Purty weather we're a-havin' naow. Yer folks all smart?"
"Yaas, we keep middlin' smart. How's yo'se'f an' the woman, Dave?"
"Oh, we git about; we git about. But we hain't what we onct was, Bill. The woman had one o' them asthmy spells last week; an' my rheumatics keeps me purty stiff. But of course we're a-gittin' old. We can't complain. Haow much corn you got?"
"Oh, mebbe a couple o' bushel," Bill would answer, lifting the sack out of the wagon.
"Waal, Judy, an' hoaw're you a-feelin' to-day? You're a-growin' to be a great big gal. You'd best stop here with me an' mammy. We hain't got no little uns no more."
And the old miller would chuck the little girl under the chin good-naturedly, as she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.
Then the mill would be put in operation and Judith would be fascinated by the sight of the golden meal pouring into the hopper.
When the corn was ground, the old man took a tenth for his share and put the rest back into Bill's sack. Then, but with no unseemly haste, the meal was lifted into the wagon and the mules untied and turned in the direction of home.
"Waal, Dave, you an' yer woman come over."
"Yaas, we'll be along by there some day. You come some Sunday an' stop all day with us."
And at last they would go rattling away up the hill toward Clayton.
Then to Peter Akers' general merchandise store to buy flourand sugar and coffee and a ten cent sack of candy for the children. There were always a few loungers here and even in midsummer they stood from force of habit about the tall, rusty, pot-bellied stove, spitting tobacco juice into the little sawdust yard which surrounded it. While her father made his purchases and passed the time of day with the loungers about the stove, Judith would walk about looking at the bright-patterned calicoes and chintzes ranged on the shelves, the shiny dippers and saucepans, the straw hats and piles of blue denim overalls, the brooms standing upside down in a round rack, the gleaming hoes and rakes and shovels with bright-painted handles. Around the walls just below the ceiling ran a frieze of galvanized washtubs and tin plated boilers. The showcase stood on the counter near the door, and Judith, having passed all the other things in review, would flatten the end of her small nose against the glass looking at pink and yellow cakes of scented soap, barber's pole sticks of candy, bottles of ink, silk ribbons, tooth brushes, pads of letter paper, alarm clocks, pocket combs, and sheets of tanglefoot fly paper, arranged much as they have been here enumerated. She never tired of doing this. To her the store was a vast emporium capable of satisfying every human need or whim. She rarely teased Bill to buy her a ribbon or a toy, partly because she knew that he needed the money for horseshoe nails and flour; and partly because there was nothing here that she really wanted very much for herself. She felt no acute need in her own life for any of the contents of the showcase; but she regarded them none the less with deep respect and admiration.
Often Peter Akers, a baldish, pot-bellied man with a flabby face and old-fashioned sideboards, would lean across the counter with professional affability and chuck the little girl under the chin.
"Waal, Judy, you like to come in taown with yer dad? You'd best stay here an' keep store with me. Wouldn't you like to help keep store?"
Judith, looking straight at him with level, grave eyes, would answer never a word.
Then over to Jim Townsend, the blacksmith, to get some plate shoes in case a neighbor should come with a job of horseshoeing to do. Once Jim looked admiringly at Judith, whom he was really seeing for the first time, although she had been there dozens of times before.
"You got a handsome gal there, Bill," he said.
"All my gals is handsome," answered Bill complacently. "But this one here is more a boy'n a gal. She's her dad's hired hand, she is. She helps me shoe the mules, she does."
"Waal, waal, so she's a blacksmith's helper! I'm needin' a hand. Wouldn't ye like to stay here an' help me shoe hosses, eh, little gal?"
Judith looked him through and through and made no reply.
"Dad, do folks really want other folks' chillun to come an' live with 'em?" she asked her father, when they were back in the wagon.
"No, Judy, I can't say they do," Bill answered. "Other folks' young uns is gener'ly wanted 'bout as much as other folks' ailments."
"Then why do they keep a-askin' me to come an' live with 'em?"
"Oh, I dunno. It's jes a way they have. They done like that when I was a lad too."
"I wish they wouldn't," said Judith.
Then, as they drove back home through the sleepy heat of the noonday, Judith would grow hungrier and hungrier and her one thought would be of dinner. She could smell it as soon as they pulled up in the barnyard: boiled hog meat and mustard greens and young beets and potatoes. How good it tasted when at last she had a heaping plateful in front of her with a generous tin mug of cool skim milk to wash it down!
Judith liked best of all the autumn season, when the sky was a hazy, tender blue and the mellow sunshine lay like a film of golden tissue over all the earth. Then there were plenty of apples to munch; and she could go out into the garden and pick the big, red, juicy tomatoes and eat them alive, as it were, before they had been slaughtered by her mother'sparing knife. Then the corn stood in the shocks and the big, yellow pumpkins lay scattered among the stubble, suggestive of plenty. The hickory nuts and black walnuts began to drop from the early frosts, the trees turned bronze and russet and scarlet and the warm air was full of bees and butterflies and other humming, buzzing, fluttering things. The tobacco fields lay brown and bare and deserted; but from the big tobacco barns there welled forth a fragrance that was for these Kentuckians, the soul of autumn. Oozing out into the golden sunshine from every crack in the great structures, it exhilarated like an elixir, like a long draught of some rich, spicy wine. The big doors, left open to allow a free current of air, showed the long, yellowish-brown bunches hanging thick-serried in the fragrant gloom.
It was an intoxication to her at this time to be alive, to gather and eat the good things that the earth so generously provided, to see the autumn glory of the woods and roadsides, to feel the glow of the sun, the warmth of the earth under her bare feet, and to sniff in the spicy exhalations of the great barns.
On these autumn days the sun sank early; and this was the time that the Pippinger children most enjoyed their play. There was something about the chilly drawing-in of these October twilights that made them want to leap and run and throw their arms about and utter wild, animal-like noises into the gathering night. Judith was always the leader in these games, and her wild abandon easily infected the others. Round and round the clothesline prop they would fly in the game of "Go in and out the Windows," and "The Farmer in the Dell," the long braids bobbing, the boys' shirttails, escaped from their overalls, flapping in the wind with the girls' petticoats. Then, tiring of this, there would be "Hide and Seek," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and the inexhaustible "Tag."
Minnie, the cat, liked these evenings too, and so did her kitten and the white cat that Judith had rescued from the Blackford boys. The cats, like the children, were filled with a spirit of kobold friskiness, as though their evening bowl ofskim milk had gone to their heads. In daytime they did nothing but stretch, sleep, yawn, and wash their faces in the sun; but the chill of the autumn evening brought to them also the spirit of adventure. In their strong, slinky litheness, they jumped and darted and climbed; and the children watching them envied them their perfect unison of body and spirit. Minnie, in spite of all her years and the many times that she had been a mother, was a kitten again. Nothing would do her but she must run clear to the top of the clothesline prop, scratch mightily with her front claws as though sharpening them, then make a sudden leap to the grass and circle about like a mad thing. Her kitten darted up into the lilac bush and peered down at the children with glowing topaz eyes, then whisked away to circle after its mother. The white cat, frisking in and out among the shadows, made the children think of ghosts.
Often a wind would spring up out of the west as the twilight thickened, and the young Pippingers would run in the face of it, their hair blown back, their arms waving wildly, their voices ringing shrilly into the autumn night: little Valkyries of the hills.
Once, as they were playing a ring game by the barn, a big red moon rose over the brow of the hill and showed their dancing figures silhouetted sharply in black on the barn wall. The weird little shadow figures seemed like a troop of goblin companions that had come to join their play. The more wildly they pranced and threw their arms about, the more reckless and drunken grew the little shadow creatures on the wall, stimulating them in turn to a still greater frenzy of abandon. The wind blew in their faces and brought subtle whiffs of fragrance from the big tobacco barn down the ridge. The other children soon forgot this evening; but to Judith it remained always as one of the exalted moments of her life.
When the children were called in to supper after these autumn orgies, they would come with ruddy cheeks and blazing eyes. Bill, looking about the table, would say withsatisfaction: "Them young uns ain't a-lookin' poorly. Guess we won't need to call in the doctor for 'em yet a spell."
The little glass lamp would be lighted in the middle of the oilcloth-covered table; and there would be fried potatoes and a big red platter of sliced tomatoes and roastin' ears steaming hot—a delicious meal!
The winter season was not such a happy one for the Pippinger children. Usually the weather would be warm and pleasant and the roads dry up to Thanksgiving or even later. But then would come the inevitable heavy frosts, followed by thaws and the cold, dismal rains that lasted sometimes for days together. Then the young Pippingers had to stay home from school and time hung very heavy on their hands. They bickered and quarreled and yawned and stared idly out of the window at the drearily falling rain and the dismal expanse of mud that would be there till the April sun dried it up.
Sometimes when the house grew too unbearably dull and small, they threw their coats over their heads and plodded through the heavy mud to the barn to play in the corn fodder and consort with the mules and chickens. It was a great relief to their mother to get them out of the house. Around the barn, the sodden stable dung made a lake of stinking filth and the children had to step very carefully from stone to stone to avoid sinking into it. Inside it was fun for a while to jump about in the clean fodder, to curry the mules and climb on their backs, and to hunt for eggs in the loft and on the top of the beams. But they soon tired of this and trooped back to the house, bringing with them their boredom and a quantity of sticky mud which refused to wipe off on the dirty bit of folded rag carpet before the door.
When the rainy spell was over Mrs. Pippinger heaved a sigh of relief and started them off to school again. Dressed in faded caps and little made-over, outgrown coats, too short in the sleeves and too tight across the chest, they trudged through the mud, glad to be away from the dreary house. When they got to school they were tired to the point ofexhaustion; and the mud, which had splashed over their shoe tops, was drying in grayish flakes on their stockings. A tremendous wood fire, built by some of the older boys, blazed in the big box stove and made the room so hot that the children, tired from their long walk and entering that close, heated atmosphere from the chilly freshness of the outdoors, almost fell asleep over their copybooks.
It was worse still as the winter advanced and snow began to fall. The melted snow mixed with the mud and made a thin, oozy, penetrating slush, which usually meant wet feet for the Pippingers. It was not always possible for Bill to provide five new pairs of shoes and five new pairs of rubbers or overshoes with the oncoming of the bad season. And so the shoes were often broken and the rubbers worn into holes in the heels, which gave an easy entrance to the cold winter slush. For this reason and because the air of the schoolhouse was kept so close and overheated, coughs and colds were of very frequent occurrence. The winter, in fact, was one long stretch of barking, sniveling, wheezing, and nose-blowing, with sometimes a more severe attack which kept one or other of the children from school. Mrs. Pippinger always kept on hand in a stone jar a homemade cough syrup consisting of butter, sugar, and vinegar. It did not seem to have any very great curative effect on the coughs and colds; but the children were always glad to take it because it tasted so good.
Then too, as the winter advanced, the pantry and smokehouse grew more and more empty. "Roasin' ears," tomatoes, cucumbers and such garden delicacies were gone with the early frosts. Sweet potatoes, dried out on a shelf behind the kitchen stove, lasted a while longer, but were soon eaten up. White potatoes, cabbage, and pumpkins lasted till about Christmas. After that the frost always got what was left of them, as the Pippingers had no cellar. Christmas, too, saw the last of the apples; for Kentucky is too far south to grow good winter apples. The cured and smoked hog meat hanging in the smokehouse sometimes lasted till spring; but more often it was gone by February. The few jars of jam and cans of peaches andblackberries that Mrs. Pippinger managed to put up through the summer were turned into empty bottles almost before the frost came. Then began a long, lean season of mush and milk for breakfast, corn cakes and drippings for dinner, and corn cakes and sorghum for supper. If Bill could get a job stripping tobacco or shucking corn, there would be some canned goods and a side of bacon from Peter Akers' store. But usually the tobacco was all stripped and the corn all shucked before the lean season came on. Sometimes there was a job of hauling to be had. But the hauling jobs were so few and scattered that they did little more than provide the Pippingers with the occasional sack of flour to make the Sunday and holiday treat of hot biscuit. Bill made special efforts to keep flour in the house, for he did dearly love a light hot biscuit.
The winter that Judith was twelve years old was an unusually bad one. For days the heavy rains fell drearily over the sodden earth. The all-pervading mud went everywhere in the house, in spite of Mrs. Pippinger's housewifely efforts to keep it out. It dried in light gray flakes on the floor, the rungs of chairs, the lower parts of walls and doors and furniture, wherever careless passing feet smeared it off. When Mrs. Pippinger swept it rose in a fine, dry, choking dust that filled the air and then settled thickly on every object in the room. Luella and Lizzie May were kept busy dusting and shaking the dust-filled rags out at the door. The air of the kitchen was damp with steam from wet coats and overalls hung to dry behind the stove. The woodbox was full of sodden, half-rotten fence rails or newly cut green wood, both of which required the greatest coaxing to induce them to burn. Usually the fence rails had to be dried in the oven. They shed rotted scraps over the oven and the floor and the steam of their drying rose up and joined the other exhalations.
When the rain stopped it always turned cold and a piercing, bitter wind came out of the north. For two or three days it stayed cold, then grew mild and cloudy; the wind changed into the south-east and the fine, penetrating rain began all over again.
One bleak, windy day in February the children came home from school to find their mother with a very bad cold. She had done a big washing the day before, had gone out warm from working in the hot suds and got chilled hanging out the clothes in the bitter wind. She was hot and feverish from the cold, her head ached and her chest was tight. Before going to bed Bill made her rub her chest well with skunk grease and take a tablespoonful of castor oil and a good dose of the sugar and vinegar cough mixture.
In the morning she was still poorly and the twins, now grown into a sense of responsibility, insisted on her remaining in bed. They sent Judith and the boys off to school and stayed at home to take care of their mother and do the work. By evening she was much better; and the next day she got up and went about her work as usual.
But two days later, when the children came home from school, she was worse again. She had a high fever, could eat nothing, and failed to make her usual resistance when Bill and the twins insisted on her going straight to bed.
The next day she was no better. The twins stayed home again and Bill drove over and fetched her half sister Abigail.
Aunt Abigail's children were grown and so she could be spared to help in time of sickness. It was for this reason and this only that Bill went for Abigail instead of for Cousin Rubena or Aunt Libby Crupper.
"I might a knowd," she snapped, as she climbed into the wagon, "that Annie'd be daown sick. She don't never take no care of herse'f; an' them folks that don't take care of theirselves makes a heap o' trouble for others. An' I declare with all them near growed-up young uns she works jes as hard as if they was still babies. You an' her has allus babied yer chillun, Bill. They ain't never been made to learn to work the way they'd otta."
Bill made no reply. He always avoided argument with Aunt Abigail. She was the sort of person, not infrequently found in out-of-the-way places, who combines great narrowness with great strength of mind. To a lover of domestic peace and harmony she was not comfortable to live with.
She was considerably older than her sister, a thin, painfully tidy little person with bright, hard, shallow black eyes, a close-shut, thin-lipped mouth and shiny black hair drawn tightly back into a knot that looked as hard as granite. When she took off her jacket and sunbonnet and the many folds of scarf wound round and round her head and neck, she disclosed a spotless checked dress and a white apron with small black polka dots, faultlessly starched and ironed. The apron wasfrilled and rounded at the corners. The strings, tied in a careful bow in the back, were ample and rustling with starch. Aunt Abigail was very particular about her aprons.
She bustled into the room where her half sister lay in bed restless and feverish.
"Waal Annie, you sholy are a-lookin' bad; an' all, as I ses to Bill, jes 'cause you don't take no care of yo'se'f. The idee of a-goin' aout drippin' with sweat from the washtubs an' hangin' out clothes in this weather when you don't have to! What's all them gals here fer, anyway? Can't they hang aout their mammy's washin' when they git home from school? Law, when I was their age I was a-doin' the washin' an' a-hangin' it aout an' a-cookin' an' a-scrubbin' an' a-milkin' four caows fer dad an' the boys after mammy was took away. Wait till them young uns finds aout what it's like to be without a mammy, an' they'll soon feel the diff'rence."
Aunt Abigail's manner of saying this last almost suggested that she hoped that such time would soon arrive.
The worst thing about Aunt Abigail was her voice. It was even more nasal than that of most Kentuckians; and her a's were harder and flatter. It was hard, shallow, and piercing, like her eyes, and absolutely without depth or resonance. It was as soulless as the hammering of a poker on a tin stewpan. It rang and vibrated through the three rooms of the little log house like a call to arms. The Pippingers all shrank from it but took it for granted because she was their aunt.
"I'd best go on to Clayton, naow I'm hitched, an' fetch Doc MacTaggert," said Bill, looking tentatively at his wife.
"Nothin' o' the kind, Bill! I don't need no doctor. I ain't got but a bad cold, an' I'll be all right in a day or two. You ain't a-goin' to fetch no docter." Mrs. Pippinger's voice had a ring of genuine alarm.
"Waal, I dunno," hesitated Bill, appealing with his eyes to Aunt Abigail, who was bustling about the room setting things to rights.
"If ye'd ast me, I'd say Annie'd otta have a doctor," said Abigail. "But of course folks allus knows their own businessbest. I don't never advise people, so's they won't have a chanct to turn back on me an' say, 'I told ye so!'"
Still Bill hesitated, looking from one woman to the other.
"No, Abigail, I really ain't so bad as that," placated her sister. "'Tain't nothin' but a hard cold. An' I think mebbe if Bill would chop the head off that rooster—the little un that don't seem to be good fer nothin'—I could take a little chicken broth."
So Bill went to slaughter the inadequate white rooster and Aunt Abigail hastened to see to it that there was hot water to scald him.
But when the chicken broth was made Mrs. Pippinger could eat none of it. The next day she was no better; but still she made alarmed resistance whenever Bill suggested going for a doctor. Aunt Abigail sent home for some more dresses and aprons and prepared to make a stay of it.
Two days later she was so much worse that Bill did not stop to argue with her but hitched up and drove to Clayton for Dr. MacTaggert. Aunt Abigail busied herself mightily putting a clean gown on Mrs. Pippinger, clean sheets and pillow slips on the bed, clean towels on the washstand, in preparation for the august visit.
The doctor came, a bald, dust-colored little man with spectacles and an air of patient resignation to his lot. He took her pulse and temperature, asked about her bowels, listened at her chest, and said that she had congestion of the lungs. From a black leather satchel he took out two bottles of medicine, some pills in a little brown box, and some pills in a small envelope. On the labels of these he wrote directions for giving them and left them with Aunt Abigail, saying that he would call again day after to-morrow. When he was gone they all experienced a sense of great relief, as though the necessary thing had now been done and the sick woman would at once begin to get well.
But Mrs. Pippinger did not get well; and when Dr. MacTaggert paid his second visit she was half delirious. He looked serious and concerned and left several more medicines withmore complicated directions for administering them. Aunt Abigail, who always prided herself on her devotion to duty, carried out his instructions with scrupulous exactness. She was also very particular about excluding draughts and in fact all outside air. With great care she pasted up the cracks about the two small windows.
There followed a long period when Mrs. Pippinger alternated between being very sick and not quite so sick. The house was kept unnaturally tidy. The children moved about on tiptoe and spoke in whispers. Judith and the boys stayed outside or in the barn as much as they could. The rooms were full of the smell of strong medicines and ointments. Neighbors and relatives came bringing presents of soups and jellies and pickles and such bedside delicacies, which the children ate with subdued relish after their mother had refused them. The air was full of anxiety, of restlessness, of a sense of waiting, as though the regular flow of life hung for a time suspended and everybody was waiting with half-taken breath for the signal to breathe and live again.
When Bill came in from the barn after the evening chores were done, he pulled off his shoes very quietly and went about in sock feet. Sometimes he went to his wife's bedside and sat silently watching her flushed, restless tossing, or talked with her for a while in low tones if the fever was gone and she was lying pale and quiet. Then he would go back into the kitchen and sit by the stove with his quid of tobacco in his cheek, now and then lifting the lid nearest him to spit into the wood fire. He was a man of clean habits and hardly ever spat in the woodbox. Often he would sit like this till long after his usual bedtime, to be roused at last by Aunt Abigail's strident tones.
"Well, land sakes, Bill Pippinger, if you hain't a-settin' there yet! You'd otta be in bed this hour an' a half. If you're fixin' to be over bright an' early to help Andy Blackford butcher hawgs to-morrow mornin' you'd best be a-gittin' some sleep else ther'l be no rousin' you in the mornin'."
Thus exhorted, Bill would grunt sleepily, slouch to his feet, stretch, yawn, wind the clock, whittle a few kindlings for themorning and retire into the little back room where the air was already heavy and stale from the breathing of Craw and Elmer.
In spite of the occasional days when she felt better and talked about getting up, Mrs. Pippinger grew steadily worse. There were whole days now when she lay in a semi-stupor only rousing a little to smile feebly if Bill or one of the children came to her bedside. She had grown very thin, and her hands that lay on the quilt were white and transparent.
One day on leaving the doctor took Aunt Abigail aside and said in a low tone: "I'm afraid there's not much hope that she'll live through it. If she's in pain and her breath comes hard, give her one of these."
And he handed Aunt Abigail a little envelope containing small, white pills.
Her stupor increased very noticeably after this and she was hardly ever conscious. The neighbors came in and took turns sitting up with her to relieve Bill and Abigail. They moved her bed into the kitchen for greater warmth and convenience of waiting on her; and there she lay day after day more like a dead woman than a living one.
One very cold day her breathing was loud and sonorous like snoring. It echoed all through the stagnant air of the little house. When the doctor came that afternoon he took Bill and Aunt Abigail aside on the way out.
"It isn't likely she'll live till morning," he said.
Bill did not answer; he went to the barn to do his chores. Aunt Abigail hurried back into the house with the air of one who has work to do.
Aunt Sally Whitmarsh came that night to sit up. She was an elderly woman with crafty eyes and rather handsome regular features that were always set and composed, as though she were sitting in church listening to a sermon. She was not so thin as most of her neighbors and her skin was white and fine and almost free from wrinkles.
Then when the supper table was cleared, the dishes washed and the children in bed, and the watchers were settling downfor the night, the doorknob turned and old Aunt Selina Cobb stood in the doorway.
She came in with teeth chattering, the remains of an old Paisley shawl drawn tightly about her head and shoulders. A blast of icy air swept in after her.
"Land, but it's a-goin' to be a cold night!" she quavered, as she drew off two pairs of ragged mittens and warmed her withered, claw-like hands over the stove. "It'll like be zero afore mornin'."
She was a tiny, dried-up creature, not more than four and a half feet high and so thin that there seemed to be nothing at all between the yellow, wrinkled skin and the bones beneath. The eyes, as in many old people, showed the only remains of youth and life. They were bright and brown and looked about the room with birdlike alertness. Her movements were sudden, quick and nervous, like those of a person living always at high tension. Her calico dress, when she took off her jacket, was seen to be patched in so many places and with so many different kinds of goods that it was idle to speculate as to its original color and pattern. Her apron was even more patched than the dress. The patchwork garments were clean, stiff with starch and smoothly ironed.
"She's bad off to-night, ain't she, poor thing?" said Aunt Selina, stepping from the fire to the bedside of the sick woman.
Aunt Sally Whitmarsh moved to the bedside and stood beside her. "Yes," she said in a low voice, "she's bad off. The doctor don't think she'll last through the night."
"Eh, dear! Well, well, poor Annie! It seems like yestiddy she was a little gal a-runnin' araound bareleggèd."
"Yes, an' we two stood together at her weddin' here in this very house. You mind that day, Aunt Selina? It don't seem no time sence."
They could see their breath in the cold air about the bed. Their teeth began to chatter and they went back to rub their hands together over the stove, then settled down in kitchen chairs close to the warmth.
"You'd best be a-gittin' to bed, Bill," advised Aunt Abigail. "You can't do nothin' fer her, an' the rest of us'll set up."
Bill was sitting beside the woodbox, between the stove and the wall, apart from the three women. When Abigail spoke he cleared his throat, recrossed his legs, and said: "No, I guess I'll set."
They settled down to wait. Outside it was growing steadily colder. An icy wind was sweeping down from the north, whistling about the decayed old house, rattling window sashes and worming its way through every chink and crevice. It whispered eerily behind the ugly old wall paper and fluttered little loose fragments like struggling wings. Long dust webs clinging to the ceiling above the stove swung to and fro in the draught like clotheslines on a windy day. The loud, sonorous snoring sound filled the room and dominated the hushed voices of the woman about the stove. The little glass lamp threw its dim yellow light over the oilcloth-covered table, threw its dim reflection to the low ceiling and left the rest of the room in deep shadow. They sat waiting.
As the night wore on, the breathing of the dying woman grew gradually less noisy. The creeping cold crowded the three women more closely about the stove and the lid was often lifted to put in more wood.
Gradually the breathing grew fainter, so that it ceased to dominate the room and became scarcely audible even when listened for. The clock struck three slow strokes. Still the women huddled about the stove and Bill sat silently beside the woodbox and the scarcely heard breath fluttered on the lips of the dying woman.
Suddenly she gave a short, quick gasp. Aunt Abigail got up quickly and stood for a moment by the bedside, long enough to make sure that she was still breathing.
"If she lives past four," she said, turning away with a slight shade of disappointment, "she'll likely last another day. This is the time they most gener'ly go."
A movement passed almost imperceptibly through the group about the stove; but no one spoke.
"Waal, I'm ready to be took when my time comes," went on Aunt Abigail, coming back to her seat by the stove. "And when I'm gone it hain't a-goin' to be said of me that I didn't do my duty in times o' sickness an' death. I bin real bad lately with them liver spells I git, an' I was in the very midst o' puttin' up new paper on the front bedroom—it's a awful nice paper an' one that won't show dirt, a chocolate ground with kinder red flowers on it. But when Bill come a-drivin' over with word that Annie was down sick, I put my things right on an' come back with 'im. An' I hain't bin home sence."
Still they sat about the stove and dozed and talked and waited. It seemed as if the faint breathing, the ticking of the clock, the crackling of the fire, and the low intermittent drone of the women's voices would go on forever.
"If the signs tells true, there'll be other deaths among the hills this winter," went on Aunt Abigail, looking from one to the other of the little group. "The dawgs has been a-howlin' awful this winter. Well, the Lord gives an' the Lord takes away; an' none of us knows when our time is a-comin'. When you settle on a spot fer Annie's grave, Bill, you'll want to see that there's a piece left alongside fer yerse'f to lay beside her."
Bill shifted his legs and grunted. The grunt might have meant anything.
There was a low moan. This time they all looked toward the bed for a moment, then sank back into the old positions. Again a faint, rattling gasp. Aunt Abigail got up from her chair with ill-concealed alacrity. Aunt Sally and Aunt Selina looked at each other, then toward the bed, and rose and followed her lead. Once more a faint, guttural gasp came from the dying woman's white lips. Aunt Abigail bent over her, her hand on her pulse, and listened. Then she turned back the covers and placed her hand upon her sister's heart. There were a few moments of heavy silence broken at last by the voice of Aunt Abigail, who spoke with a certain subdued sharpness and authoritativeness. "It's time to stop the clock. Annie's gone!"
Preparations for the funeral began at once. The children, confused and bewildered, were dazed more than grieved by their mother's death, the full gravity of which they could not realize in the midst of Aunt Abigail's hectic hurry and scurry. There was much to be done. The girls' Sunday dresses of red cotton crêpe must be dyed black, their hair ribbons likewise. Aunt Abigail stood over the boiling dye in the wash boiler and stirred and lifted the goods with two long smooth pieces of broom handle till they were funereal enough to satisfy her. Then she soused and rinsed them through many waters and hung them dripping on the line, three sad little black garments, weeping as it were for their own dismal transformation. Lizzie May went out and looked at them and burst suddenly into loud weeping at the sight of what had so lately been the three pretty little red dresses that their mother had made for them. She could not have told whether it was for the dresses or her mother that she was crying. Then the dresses had to be pressed by Aunt Abigail's swift, capable hands. And the boys' Sunday clothes and Bill's Sunday suit—the one he was married in—had to be aired and pressed also.
"Air you sure yer dad's got a fine white shirt?" asked Aunt Abigail, looking up at Luella from the suit she was pressing.
Luella was washing dishes. She let her hands rest idle in the dishwater for a moment.
"Dad's got a fine shirt," she answered promptly, "but it's stripèd."
"Is the stripes black?"
"I couldn't say fer sure if the stripes is black or navy blue."
"Well, you'd best fetch it here an' let me look at it, Elly, 'cause if the stripes hain't black it won't do fer 'im to wear at his own wife's funeral," opined Aunt Abigail.
Luella wiped off her hands and brought the shirt, which Aunt Abigail, after careful inspection at the window, pronounced to be satisfactory.
"The stripes is black all right. It'll do," she approved, handing it back to Luella, who folded it away again in the drawer.
Bill went about in a dazed way, hardly conscious of the life about him. He did the chores about the barn and chopped the wood mechanically from force of habit. When he was spoken to he did not hear. He looked haggard and grief-stricken.
"He feels bad, don't he, poor man," said Aunt Mary Blackford, looking out of the kitchen window at his stooping figure straggling aimlessly toward the barn.
"Yaas, he grieves some," admitted Aunt Abigail. "But he'll be a-lookin' araound fer another afore the year's out. That's haow men is."
The neighborhood for miles around came to the funeral. The hitched buggies filled the barnyard and were strung out for some distance along the side of the road. The women wore their black mourning clothes, with little white aprons tied about their waists. Some of the men had on their wedding suits. Some wore ill-fitting readymades bought from the mail order house after a good crop year. Others came in clean overalls and corduroy jackets lined with sheepskin. All were shaved, sleek-haired and serious-looking. When they had tied their horses, they gathered together in little knots in the barnyard talking in low tones, not about the dead, but about the price of hogs on the hoof, the long, hard winter that it had been this year, and the best way of preparing a tobacco bed. At a sign from the undertaker, they filed respectfully, with bared heads, into the little front room whither their womenfolk had preceded them.
The long coffin stood on a trestle in the middle of the room. It seemed tremendously large and imposing. The mouse-like little woman was claiming more attention now than she had ever done in all the forty-odd years of her drab existence. Bill sat at the head, staring straight before him. The children, with red eyes and dazed, frightened faces, sat along one side. Aunt Abigail and several other near relatives, with solemn faces and handkerchiefs in their hands, completed the circle about the bier. The other mourners stood or sat against the walls. Several of the women were crying. The three womenwho had laid out Aunt Annie and had not shed a tear at her death, were all weeping copiously now.
The preacher was young, insignificant, and ineffectual, a poor wisp of humanity, who had probably drifted into preaching because it was the only thing that he could do, and had been elbowed into this remote corner by the law of the survival of the fittest. In the flat, empty voice of one who has sounded no depths of life, he spoke feebly of the virtues of the "dear departed sister," offered a sort of canned consolation to the "bereaved husband and children," and mumbled a few concluding words about the "hope of a glorious resurrection."
Then Jabez Moorhouse rose to the six feet three inches of his height.
"Friends an' neighbors," he said, standing simply with his hands in his pockets and speaking in the tone of one talking across the kitchen stove, "the Reverend Mister Spragg has spoke the blessin' of the church over Aunt Annie Pippinger that lies here in the coffin. But not many of us is church goers an' the Reverend Mister Spragg is not much acquainted among us. The Bible says, 'Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.' So I can't let this moment go by without risin' to my feet to offer our respects as friends an' neighbors to the memory of one o' the kindest, best-hearted and hardest-workin' wimmin in the whole of Scott County. Solomon, the wise man, says, 'The heart knoweth its own bitterness.' An' we all know that talk don't do much to help them that suffers. But I feel I speak for all of us here when I say how sad we feel for Bill Pippinger an' for these motherless little uns an' how we're all a-standin' here ready to do what we kin to make this loss easier for him to bear. Amen. Let us all sing, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.'"
Most of the women were crying now and the men clearing their throats and furtively wiping their eyes with the backs of their hands. But they all joined bravely if haltingly in the old funeral hymn, as Jabez' deep, sonorous voice leading them filled the little room.
Nearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer to Thee,E'en though it be a crossThat raises me;Still all my song shall beNearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer to Thee.
Nearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer to Thee,E'en though it be a crossThat raises me;Still all my song shall beNearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer to Thee.
Nearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer to Thee,E'en though it be a crossThat raises me;Still all my song shall beNearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer, my God, to Thee,Nearer to Thee.
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee,
E'en though it be a cross
That raises me;
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.
With the end of the hymn the mourners passed about the coffin to take their last look at the dead, then went out respectfully and left the family alone.
On the way out to form the funeral procession, the Reverend Spragg touched Jabez Moorhouse on the elbow.
"I—I wonder if you would mind reading the service at the grave? You could do it as well as I can. You know I preach in three churches and they're a long way apart and it keeps me busy going between them, especially with the roads so bad. It's a long way to the graveyard and I have to preach at seven to-night in Mayville Junction."
The little preacher was embarrassed, apologetic, but anxious to be released. He pressed a leaflet containing the service into Jabez' hand.
"All right," said Jabez, not without a trace of condescension, "I'll do it. But you don't need to give me no book." He handed back the leaflet.
The long, cold drive seemed as though it would never end; but at last they got to the little graveyard, a few white and gray stones and painted wooden slabs crowning a hill. Here they climbed out of the buggies and stamped up and down a bit to limber up their numb feet and stiff legs.
Then they gathered about the open grave, Bill and his children nearest, the others clustered about them in a silent group, the men holding their hats awkwardly in their hands, and Jabez Moorhouse spoke over the dead what he remembered of the graveside service.
"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to liveand is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down. He fleeth as it were a shadow.
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground."
He said it tenderly, as one who has come to realize that to be committed to the ground may be sweet, soothing, and desirable.
"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth."
It was over and they turned away.
But there was one to whom the thought of the lonely grave was anguish. It was when they were getting into the wagon for the long drive home, and the other mourners were letting their thoughts dwell with pleasant expectancy on fried side of hog and corn cakes, that Bill spoke for the first time since they left the house.
"Well, young uns, you hain't got no mammy now." His voice broke and he dropped his face in his hands and shook with sobs. The children gathered about him, wailing dismally. It was a long time before he could control himself enough to gather up the lines and say: "Git up there," to Tom and Bob.
For a while it was very dismal and lonely in the Pippinger household. Bill continued to send the children to school and made shift to do the housework as best he could in his slovenly male fashion. When the little Pippingers got home from school in the gathering dusk of the gray winter afternoon, there was no mother briskly baking fragrant cookies or frying corn cakes and sizzling strips of sowbelly. The untidy kitchen, already in twilight, was usually empty, with Bill choring about the barn or away doing a day's work somewhere in the neighborhood. If he happened to be in the kitchen, he sat hunched over the stove in a half stupor, his quid of tobacco in his cheek, his eyes fascinated by the gleams of fire that could be seen through the open sliding draught in front. The twins, now become the housekeepers of the family, would bustle about, polish the lamp chimney and light the lamp, brush the ashes from the stove and the hearth with the turkey feather duster, sweep up the floor and get together the evening meal. Judith helped, but only under direction. She had to be told to run and fetch the side of bacon, to get out the mixing bowl and big spoon for the corn cake batter, and to wash the milk strainer, which Bill had not washed clean in the morning. Elmer and Craw generally went with their father to help milk and do up the barn chores; and Judith went too whenever she could slip away from the twins.
On Saturdays the twins, with Judith's somewhat reluctant help, cleaned house thoroughly, repairing with feminine housewifely zeal the ravages of a week of slipshodness. They polished the stove, scrubbed the table and the floor, dusted the shelves, swept the bedrooms, beat the dust out of the rag mats, and hung out the bedding to air. Sometimes when they were busily at work, Bill would come into the kitchen, glance about and ask, "Where's your—?" then leave the questionunfinished, suddenly remembering that she was not there and never would be there again. He had always been in the habit of asking for her this way whenever he came in and did not see her at once.
As time went on and the March sunshine warmed the earth into life, Bill became more cheerful. Everything takes heart in the spring; and Bill too felt the warmth of the sunshine in his bones. Like his children, like Tom and Bob and the cows and the geese and the chickens and the grass under his feet, he lifted up his face to the light and breathed deep of the warm, sweet air. He stretched, yawned, shook from him the heaviness and lethargy of winter, and felt once more that it was good to be alive. On those rare, delicate days in March when the earth is full of a promise of spring, a promise more intoxicating than any fulfilment, he whistled and sang again as he trudged round and round the field in the long furrow getting the ground ready for the new corn crop. So the shadow of death passed from the Pippinger family.
All his thoughts now were of his children, all his planning was for them. They were in school, all five of them; but Craw and the twins would graduate this year. After that everything would be easier. Craw would be at home to help him on the farm and the twins would keep house. Then with Craw's help he would get the farm back into good shape again. The land was good; and if he could once get the washes filled up so that it could be plowed, he and Craw would raise as good a crop of tobacco on it as Uncle Ezra Pettit or old Hiram Stone or any of that lot that felt themselves so much better than other folks because they had the time and the money to keep their ground in shape to raise good tobacco. Yes, Bill would show them all right. In the cool, invigorating March air and heartening sunshine he felt himself filled with a boundless zest for work and achievement.
Things went better with the Pippinger family after the twins were through school. Little women already, with a natural zest for housekeeping, they polished the milk pans, cleaned the cupboards, churned the butter and washed andrinsed and blued the clothes, all the time clacking cheerfully about their work and about the new dresses they were making and the coats they were planning to have before winter came on and the new shoes they would get when dad got paid for his last job of hauling and the Fair at Cynthiana, to which they were all going, dad having promised each of them a quarter to spend. Already, too, they had a nose for gossip and loved to talk about the neighbors and their doings. Again and again they told each other how stingy Uncle Ezra Pettit was and how meanly the Pettits lived in spite of their big house and all their land and money.
Judith was such poor help about the house that the twins soon stopped bothering with her and did the work themselves, only insisting that she look after her own clothes and take her turn at washing the dishes, a job that none of them enjoyed. These tasks done, she was left free to follow her father about the barnyard or run the woods and fields. Soon, however, because she was not lazy and took a deep interest in the farm animals, she made herself useful by taking over most of the out-of-door chores. She brought up the cows and milked them, fed the pigs, took care of the little chicks and saw that all the broods were cooped for the night. She hoed in the garden and kept the rows of beans and turnips thrifty and free from weeds. Like a lynx following its prey, she stalked the turkey hens and found their nests; and she would go out in any kind of storm to save the tender little turkeys from the wetting that would be their death.
Living so intimately in the life of the barnyard, the mysteries of sex were not mysteries at all to her, but matters of routine to be dealt with in the same matter-of-fact fashion in which you slopped the pigs or tied the mules to the hitching post. She knew all about the ways of roosters with hens. She saw calves born and testicles cut from squealing pigs, from young bulls to change them into fat steers and from young stallions to make them tractable in harness. These things interested her, but not more so than other barnyard activities. She was strangely free from precocious interest insex matters. At school she ignored the small dirtiness that lurks wherever many children are gathered together.
From her own and the neighbors' barnyards Judith had picked up all the profanity and obscenity that is a part of the life of such places, and she used it freely, joyously and unashamedly. Bill's mild remonstrances, "What kind o' talk is that for a little gal?" and the horror of the twins had no effect upon her.
"I should suttenly think shame to myse'f, Judy, if I was you," Lizzie May would say, "to talk that air way. What makes you go fer to do it?"
"Well, Craw talks that way, an' the Blackford boys does, an' dad does too when he's with other men. I ain't no diff'rent from them."
"In course you're diff'rent; you're a gal."
"Well, anyway, I don't feel like one," Judy would answer unrepentantly.
If she could have put into words what she vaguely felt, she would have said that the language of the barnyard was an expression of something that was real, vital and fluid, that it was of natural and spontaneous growth, that it turned with its surroundings, that it was a part of the life that offered itself to her. The prim niceness of the twins, suitable enough to them in the world that they were making for themselves, was for her a deadening negation of life. To have to be correct and decent in her speech was the same as being forced to sit motionless on a straight-backed chair in the front room when she was consumed with a longing to run and jump and whoop and chase the dog and play at "Hide and Seek" around the barn.
Craw was at home now and able to help his father. But the plans that Bill had made in the invigorating coolness of early spring did not bear much fruit. It was one thing to plan work and quite another thing to do it when the dog days came and the sun baked the hillsides. Then as he hoed out weeds or followed the cultivator in the heat of the day, and the sweat rolled down his body in scalding streams, he felt less enthusiastic about raising a big tobacco crop. Indeed,the task of reclaiming the farm was so big and formidable that it would have discouraged a much more energetic man than Bill. It was easier to do jobs of hauling and the like, and so make enough money to pay the store bill. Bill had always been partial to jobs of hauling. This also suited Craw, whose mind was of the routine sort, incapable of planning or grasping any enterprise however small. Craw was sixteen when he left school, a big, good-looking, good-natured, well developed fellow, but slow as a tortoise. He could follow the plow or drive a team or do any simple task assigned to him, but of initiative he had none. With Craw's help Bill increased his acreage of corn considerably and hauled out his long accumulated barnyard manure onto the corn field, thus getting a much better yield. But neither of them broached the subject of raising tobacco. Craw, growing rapidly stronger and bigger, soon began to "work out," and earned his seventy-five cents a day from Uncle Ezra Pettit or old Hiram Stone or any of the neighboring tobacco planters who wanted a hand. He was a good, steady, plodding worker, and the neighbors who employed help soon learned to call upon him. Proud in the possession of money, he liked to patronize his sisters, and brought them home occasional presents of scented soap, white muslin shirtwaists and imitation jewelry for the pleasure of listening to their excited squeals of delight and feeling male and superior. Pretty soon he got to going with a girl; and after that he never brought his sisters anything.
It was a matter of great wonder and amazement to Bill how quickly the children grew up. Up to Annie's death he had regarded them as mere babies. After that they seemed to become young men and women all of a sudden. Two years after their graduation from school the twins were wearing long dresses and putting up their hair; and Lizzie May had a "feller" coming to see her every Sunday. She had known him all her life, but had become friendly with him at a party the winter before. His name was Dan Pooler and his folks lived over near Dry Ridge. He came in a red-wheeled buggy which he had carefully washed down and polished the day before;and he and Lizzie May would drive forth grandly. Lizzie May was very proud of her swain's good looks and store clothes and of the shiny, red-wheeled buggy. When Craw guffawed and spoke of him as "Dam Fooler," and when Judith teased her wickedly about him, she became very indignant and haughty.
Judith, too, was rapidly growing up. She had become such a tall, straight, handsome girl, with such strong, free gestures and such a ringing, careless laugh, that Bill's heart swelled with pride when he saw people turn to look after her on the streets in Clayton. She was learning, too, to smile at the young men, and practising whenever occasion offered the arts of banter and coquetry.
She began to develop an interest in clothes, and brought to the neat, but uninspired dressmaking of the twins a sense of form, color, and picturesqueness.
"You know, Lizzie May, you ought to wear soft, sleazy things an' have 'em nice an' full. Get a blue voile—not a real light blue, but that there new Alice blue. You'll have to send off for it to get the right color. An' make it with the waist crossing in front an' a real full skirt an' a sash tied in a big bow at the back. Then you'd look so nice that Dan Pooler'd jes have to ast you whether he wanted you or not."
"You shet up an' tend yer own business, Judy," Lizzie May answered. Her uncertain relations with Dan were making her somewhat irritable. But she heeded the suggestions about the dress and followed them out as best she could.
"An' I'm a-goin' to have me a new petticoat that won't be like nobody else's petticoat," Judy went on. "I thought it out las' night afore I went to sleep. I'm a-goin' to get some red turkey cotton, real bright, an' have it in points all araound the bottom an' make three black French dots in each point. I bet when you two see it you'll both want one like it."
"You'd better be thinkin' of havin' yo'se'f a warm jacket agin the time winter comes on," said Luella half reprovingly yet betraying more than a gleam of interest in the prospective petticoat.
"I'm a-goin' to have braown ve'vet collar an' cuffs on my new jacket," put in Lizzie May.
So they would sit together stitching and planning and chattering happily over their few yards of cheap cotton goods.
The mail order catalogues had of late years come to take a large place in the lives of the Pippingers and their neighbors, much to the disgust of Peter Akers, whose store was shrinking instead of growing. They were a source of endless interest to the girls, especially the twins. In the winter evenings when the lamp was lighted they would bring these enormous books to the table and turn the endless pages, never tiring of the pictures of slim, simpering, abundant-haired young women arrayed in coats, suits, sweaters, dresses, aprons, nightgowns, corsets, chemises, union suits: every kind of garment that goes upon the female figure. The gorgeous colored pages held them longest and often caused Lizzie May to gasp with admiration and envy.
"My, I wish I was as pretty as that and had that blue silk dress!" she sighed, pointing out the object of her envy to Luella.
"Oh, land, you're much better lookin' than that gal, Liz!" Judy exclaimed, looking over her shoulder. "She's got an awful smirk!"
Lizzie May, though not entirely convinced, patted her blond hair with a gratified expression.
Bill and the boys looked at the pictures of men in overalls and work shirts, tools, wagons, buggies, harness, and farm machinery. Sometimes Craw would hesitate over the pages of ladies in underwear, then blush furiously and turn quickly to the mowing machines if he thought that any one was noticing him.
The books served many purposes, all and more than does the daily newspaper in homes where the newspaper enters. The old ones were used to light fires, to wrap up winter pears, to paste over broken window panes or cracks in the wall. In the backhouse they did duty as toilet paper. And Craw, beginning to smoke cigarettes, wrapped the crumbled nativeleaf in a bit of the margin and puffed away with the air of one conscious that he has attained man's estate.
It was about this time that Judith and the twins took to using tooth brushes. But the boys, exhorted to do likewise, poohooed such vanities.
"Mebbe you gals needs to hoe out your teeth," Craw would say condescendingly, "but my mouth's clean, same's the rest o' my insides."
The summer that Judith was sixteen she came home from Sadieville one afternoon in a state of excitement.
"What d'ye think I'm a-fixin' to do, dad? I'm a-goin' over to Aunt Eppie Pettit's to work out. Aunt Eppie come out to the road as I was a-drivin' past an' she ses would I like to come over to her place to work. She's got hired hands a-eatin' there, and four cows to milk, an' she ses there's too much work for Cissy an' would I come for a spell. She snapped her false teeth at me a time or two, but I didn't mind. I 'member haow when I was little I used to think she was a-goin' to bite me; but now I ain't a-skairt of her. So I told her, yes, I'd come; an' I'm a-goin' to git a dollar a week. Elmer's plenty big enough to do my chores, so I kin be spared easy enough."
She said air this almost in one breath. Bill, who had been chopping stove wood, stood with one foot on the chopping block and looked at her with a mixture of surprise and disapproval.
"Pshaw, Judy," he exclaimed, spitting disparagingly into the chips. "What do you want to be a-goin' there fer? I wouldn't if I was you. My gal don't need to go a-emptyin' nobody's slops, let alone old Ezra Pettit's. I wouldn't do no sech thing."
"Oh, but I'm a-goin', dad. I told her I'd come. Craw works out an' earns money, an' I want to earn some money too. If I stay there ten weeks I'll have ten dollars, an' that'll buy me my clothes an' shoes fer the winter."
Bill saw that she was quite determined, so he made no further opposition. A couple of days later he drove her and her satchel of clothes over to Aunt Eppie's place, which wasabout a mile and a half away on the road toward Sadieville. The road they traveled was known as the Dixie Pike. It was the main highroad between Cincinnati and Lexington. Before the Civil War it had been the coach road between these two cities; and the very old folk still told tales of prancing three-team coaches and gay horseback parties galloping by. Now one met mostly the wagons and buggies of tenant farmers, with an occasional automobile or a covered wagon occupied by gipsy folk or horse traders.
The house of the Pettits was a long, white, rambling, leisurely looking place with green shutters and a wide porch supported by square white pillars. It had been built in ante bellum days for people of a leisurely habit of life. It stood some distance back from the road, and between the road and the house stretched a neat bluegrass lawn dotted with flower beds and shade trees. A low stone wall separated the lawn from the roadside. From the rear came the cackle of hens, the cooing of doves and the scream of a peacock. Basking in the morning sunshine the place looked gracious and peaceful.
Bill reluctantly deposited his daughter and her satchel at Aunt Eppie's gate.
"Don't take no lip from nobody, Judy. You've allus got a home to come back to," he advised, as he turned the mules' heads toward home.
Judith swung briskly up the flat stone walk, through the chinks of which grass was growing, then around by the little side path to the kitchen door. Here she found Cissy rolling pie crust on a floury baking board. She and Cissy were old acquaintances. Judith sat down by the table and they chatted together till Aunt Eppie came in.
Cissy was a middle-aged woman of spare figure, dull eyes, neatly combed hair and blurred, nondescript features. There was nothing about her to notice or remember. Some explanation for this lack of personality might be found in the fact that she had been working for the Pettits since she was nineteen years old. During that time she had never had as much as a mild flirtation with any man, nor had she ever beenfurther from the Pettits' kitchen than Sadieville. For over twenty years the life of Aunt Eppie's household had been her life. She had gone there a timid young orphan girl; and in the unbroken routine of these twenty years had become a dull middle aged drudge. Each week she had received her dollar, and she was reported to have money "loaned out." Judith looked at her and thought of this report and envied Cissy. Her young mind perceived nothing of tragedy in Cissy's long years of celibacy spent in the routine of a stranger's kitchen. The only thought that passed through her head as she sat there in her radiant youth was: "My, if I only had all that money she's saved, wouldn't I have me nice clothes!"
Aunt Eppie bustled into the kitchen and was pleased to find Judith.
She was a tall, large-featured, bony woman and had a protruding chin and a wrinkled, thin-lipped mouth that shut together with the strong, swift motion of a snapping turtle. The click of her false teeth lent realism to this motion and caused her to strike terror into the hearts of small children toward whom she tried to be affable.
"Well, naow, that's a good gal to come like you said you would," she condescended. "So often these hired hands promises to come an' that's the last you see of 'em. Cissy, you take her up to your room an' show her where to put her things. She might as well sleep with you an' save dirtyin' up two pairs o' sheets, let alone the wear an' tear on 'em. An' after that she can he'p you git the apples ready fer the pies an' shell the peas and scrape the taters fer dinner. An' mind you, scrape an' not peel 'em, Judy, 'cause they're jes new out o' the ground. It's a sin to waste the best o' sech taters by peelin' 'em."
With the adaptability of youth Judith drifted easily enough into the life of the Pettit family. She left most of the indoor work to the patient Cissy and busied herself with the cows, the chickens, the turkeys and the garden, as she had done at home. She and Cissy did most of the work. Aunt Eppie believed herself to be still a hard worker, but in reality she spent most of her time bustling from one place to another bossingthe girls, Uncle Ezra, and the farm hands. She was always nosing out all sorts of small, neglected matters and calling them to the attention of the neglecter.
"Ezry, don't you fergit to fix that garden fence this mornin'," she would shout into Uncle Ezra's ear at breakfast. "The hens is a-gittin' in an' a-eatin' into the hearts of all my beets."
"An' Judy, don't fail to coop up all the settin' hens when you gather up the eggs. I don't want to raise no more chicks this year. What with the price of eggs so low it don't hardly pay to feed hens." She sighed heavily. Any mention of money loss, real or fancied, always brought this sigh to her lips.
When she was not busy directing the other members of the household, she read the "Country Gentleman," whose rosy tales of phenomenal success on the farm excited her interest and envy, made log cabin blocks for bedquilts or cut and sewed carpet rags. She already had carpets enough to keep the whole house thoroughly padded for at least a quarter century, but she could not bear to see the rags go to waste.
She was one of the few remaining members of the old "first families" of Kentucky. Her haughty aquiline nose, broad brow and penetrating eyes showed that she had intellect and breeding. In the old days, several decades before the Civil War, her father had purchased hundreds of acres in Scott County for twenty-five cents an acre. He cleared the land, realized about a hundred dollars an acre out of the timber and still possessed his hundreds of acres of fine clay loam, virgin soil, only needing the seed to produce enormous crops of almost anything. So he became rich and built this leisurely white mansion. The war brought disaster and poverty. Aunt Eppie's father was one of the few landed proprietors who did not move away but remained to begin life over again as a poor farmer. In the school of penury, Aunt Eppie, applying her superior intellect and energy, proved to be all too apt a scholar. She learned not only to be saving but to be niggardly and penurious.
Uncle Ezra had been one of Aunt Eppie's father's hiredhands. He was of much commoner clay than his wife and with age had become a mere clod. Almost as deaf as one of his own well planted fence posts, he heard nothing nor cared to hear. He spoke rarely and in half articulate grunts. His one thought in life had always been how to get the most out of his land, which was not his, but Aunt Eppie's, as she was not slow to remind him when the occasion arose. Now that he was too old to work hard he spent his days puttering about the fields and the barnyard watching, always watching. He had the reputation of being the hardest man to work for in the whole of Scott County and he paid the lowest wages.
Once in a while Aunt Eppie's brother, Hiram Stone, ate a meal in the house. He was a spare, silent man. Since his wife's death many years before he had lived attended by one old servant, in the big, rambling house on his estate. Nobody quite knew how he passed his days. He had been seen to read, to cultivate a little patch of vegetables and flowers, and to smoke meditatively on the back porch. In his youth he had been sent away to college. He always employed an overseer and had very little to do with his tenants. Nobody ever called him "Uncle Hiram." This was because he lived his life to himself and his life was not their life. He was not niggardly and interfering like Uncle Ezra and many of the other landlords. He allowed his tenants to keep a cow and pasture it on his land. He put no limit to the number of their chickens and turkeys. Yet the tenants distrusted and avoided him. They would rather work under Uncle Ezra, because he was one of themselves and they understood him.