It caused Aunt Eppie endless worry and chagrin to see the way her brother mismanaged his land. The overseer was letting it all, she said, and the tenants did as they liked and stole from him before his very face. It was a shame and a disgrace.
She said as much to him time and again. But he went his own way. He treated her always with politeness and deference and only smiled gently and enigmatically when she nagged him. The smile drove her to distraction.
Though the Pettits owned over a thousand acres of goodland and lived in a house of seventeen rooms and were said to have money in all the banks in Scott County, their way of life was not different in any essential from that of their tenants. It was even more stark and barren and sordid than most, for in the humbler homes there was sometimes love and fun, and here there was neither. The meals were eaten in dull silence except when Aunt Eppie remembered something that somebody hadn't done or when the hired girls and farm hands, who ate from the same oilcloth as their employers, got to sparring with each other.
Two hired hands ate at the dinner table, but got their breakfasts and supper at home. These were Jabez Moorhouse and Jerry Blackford, second son of Andrew Blackford, who owned a small farm next to the Pippingers. Jabez, who, when not drunk, usually held his peace, rarely spoke at the table except to ask for another portion of string beans or to have the sorghum pitcher passed to him. When he raised his head from his plate his rather vague blue eyes seemed to be either turned inward or looking at something a long distance away. Jerry, who had come successfully through his cat-torturing period, had grow into a quiet, decent, clean appearing young fellow, blond and ruddy like David of old and good to look upon in his strong young manhood. He was not more given to conversation than Jabez.
Fortunately for Judith the blight of bareness and dullness that lay over Aunt Eppie's household did not extend to the barnyard. There the morning sunlight fell as goldenly as in princes' courtyards. The geese were as dignified, the turkeys as proud, and the hens as busy as any others of their kind, and Judith enjoyed ministering to their needs and watching their ways.
The turkeys, fifty odd of them, had been little fellows when Judith came, with flat tortoise bodies and long necks, and Aunt Eppie let them wander at will among the beets and cabbages. Whenever they saw a bug or a fly they darted forth these long necks with a quick, snakelike movement and rarely failed to catch their prey. Soon they grew too big to beallowed in the garden and roamed the alfalfa and corn fields for their food. As they grew toward maturity sex divided them into two groups. The female turkeys kept together in a small, silent band and devoted themselves mainly to the business of eating, while their brothers preferred to loaf in the barnyard. A spot speckled with light and shade under a row of locust trees was their favorite promenade. With their tails spread fan-shape, their wing feathers scraping the ground, their heads and necks brilliantly blue and red and the little wormlike appendage above their beaks inflated and pendulous they would pace grandly up and down with a slow, dignified movement. The sun, striking along their satiny backs, made their feathers gleam with changing tints of rose, gold, green, and copper.
When they grew tired of the parade they loved to slip away and steal food that they knew was not intended for them. Aunt Eppie's grapes and peaches were their favorite tidbits. While feeding on these delicate morsels they talked to each other with little congratulatory gulps of delight like water gurgling out of the neck of a bottle. Then Judith would run and chase them out of the orchard, and they would all stretch out their necks at her and gobble together in indignant chorus.
It seemed a pity that so much beauty, pride, and joy in life should go to tempt the cloyed palate of some smug bishop or broker who had, compared with the soul that had lately animated the bit of white meat on his plate, but a poor notion of what it was to love, to play, and to enjoy the sun and the fruits of the earth.
"It's a shame fer folks to eat sech critters," Judith thought one blue September morning, as she watched the turkeys parade under the locust trees.
She had been slopping the pigs and was leaning on the railing of the hogpen looking at the turkeys beyond. A female turkey that had strayed from her sisters was among them and trying to make her escape. Each time that she made a move to go away, the young Toms for pure devilishness would intercept her by stepping in front of her, like a pack of village boys teasing a little girl. When she at last made her escape and flewback to her sisters, they all reached out their necks and gobbled after her derisively. Jerry and Jabez, starting out to the field where they were cutting tobacco, came and leaned for a few moments on the railing beside Judith.
"Do you know what them young Toms reminds me of?" said Judith, looking at Jerry with an eye not entirely free from the self-consciousness of sex. "They make me think of a pack o' fellers a-standin' raound the street corner in Clayton or Sadieville of a Sunday afternoon dressed in their good clothes, a-swellin' up their chests an' a-cranin' their necks after every gal that goes by, an' then a-blabbin' together about her after she's gone a-past. They'd otta think shame to theirselves for bein' so vain an' idle. There's the turkey hens all out in the field a-eatin' corn so they kin grow up quick an' lay eggs an' make more little turkeys, so Aunt Eppie an' Uncle Ezra kin have more money to put in the bank. That's haow a turkey'd otta act, 'stead of enjoyin' his own vain life."
She laughed and looked quizzically at Jerry.
Jerry had no rejoinder to make. He was not quick at repartee. But he was young, healthy, and handsome; and as he looked from the turkeys back to Judith, the smile on his lips and the answering look in his eyes made words an impertinence. Jabez looked at the turkeys and at the boy and girl and laughed an amused, indulgent laugh. He was fifty-five and had long known the way of a turkey in the sun and the way of a man with a maid.
"The young Toms'll be cut off in the pride o' life," he said in his rich, sonorous voice, "an' jes as well for them that they air. An' the turkey hens'll live to raise up families. An' the families they raise'll repeat the same thing all over agin, an' so on world without end. Amen. Solomon was right when he said there's no new thing under the sun, an' that which has been is that which is a-goin' to be. An' yet each new batch takes as much interest in livin' as if they was the only ones that had ever lived an' was a-goin' to keep on livin' forever. It's the same with folks. Hain't that so, Jerry?"
Jerry had not heard a word of what Jabez had said andJabez knew he hadn't. He had slyly filched two hairpins out of Judith's hair, had stuck them behind his ears and was pretending to march away with them.
"You gimme back them hairpins, Jerry Blackford. I've got on'y five an' my hair won't stay up with three. You'd best hand 'em over, 'cause I kin give you a black eye quick as look at you."
She tried to get hold of Jerry's wrists. Jerry got hers instead and they struggled together laughing. After a while he let go of her wrists and allowed her to capture the pins.
"You'd best git along to work," she cried, flushed and sparkling. "Uncle Ezry'll be out here in a jiffy an'll want to know why you ain't to field."
"Yaas, the old groundhog'll be diggin' out afore long," grumbled Jabez. "Come on, Jerry, folks has gotta have their terbaccer. Judy, you go in an' tell Cissy to cook us a dern good dinner."
As Judith turned away from the hogpen, bucket in hand, she almost ran into a lean, spry old man, who had come up silently behind her, his steps making no noise on the scattered straw and chaff of the barnyard.
"Howdy, Uncle Sam. Haow's Aunt Sally?"
His face darkened slightly. "Oh, she keeps smart. Is Uncle Ezry anywheres hereabouts?"
"He's mos' likely in the kitchen warmin' his feet," said Judith. "Every mornin' he has to warm his feet the longest time afore he'll step outdoors. He sets there with his sock feet on the oven shelf, an' sets an' sets. An' Cissy has to go raound him every time she wants to git to the cupboard. She says sometimes she thinks he'snevera-goin' to git up an' go aout where he belongs. I'm glad my feet ain't allus a-cold."
"That's haow you young uns allus is," answered Uncle Sam. "No feelin's for the sufferin's of the old." It was plain from Uncle Sam's way of speaking that he did not class himself among the aged.
"Andy Blackford was a-tellin' me that Uncle Ezry had some alfalfy hay he wanted to git shet of 'count of needin' the barnroom. I'm a bit short o' hay this year an' I thought I'd come daown an' see if I couldn't make some sort of a deal with him."
By this time they had reached the kitchen door. Uncle Sam stepped inside and found Ezra, as Judith had predicted, sitting with his feet on the oven fender, his suspenders down, his long gray face set and motionless. He turned his head as Uncle Sam darkened the sunny doorway.
"Waal, Sam."
"Waal, Ezry. Purty weather we're a-havin'. I hain't seed a purtier September since '83, the fall afore the coldest winter we ever had to my knowin'. An' this summer's crops is the best there's been this nine year. Corn's made an' terbaccer's made; but we'll be needin' a good rain soon to freshen up the pastures."
Uncle Ezra did not hear a word of any of this, so he grunted for answer in a non-committal manner. His feet being now roasted to a turn, he fished out his congress shoes from under the stove and drew them on slowly and methodically. Then he got up, hitched his suspenders over his stooping shoulders, took down his hat from its peg by the side of the door, and stepped out into the sunshine followed by his visitor.
The two old men passed out of the garden gate and walked across the barnyard side by side.
"I hearn you had a part spiled stack of alfalfy hay you was a-wishin' to git shet of, Ezry."
Uncle Sam said this not in his former conversational tone, but in a loud shout close to Ezra's ear; for it was intended to be heard.
"Part spiled nuthin! There hain't a leaf of it spiled. It's all good, clean alfalfy. On'y reason I want to sell it, I got plenty hay this year, an' I'm a-goin' to be needin' the room in the terbaccer barn."
"I hearn it was part spiled," shouted back Uncle Sam with brazen conviction. "Anyway, let's have a look at it, Ezry."
The two men, the one with bent back and plodding legs, the other almost as straight and spry as a youth, walked side by side down the ridge path to Uncle Ezra's biggest tobacco barn.To the right of them lay Ezra's gently rolling blue-grass pasture dotted with cattle and sheep. To the left stretched his dark green alfalfa fields, his corn, ripe and ready to be cut, and his field of ripe tobacco, the broad, tropical looking leaves now turned to a rich golden color. Part of the field was already bare; and in the distance Jerry and Jabez could be seen going down the rows with their sharp tobacco knives. With one stroke they split the stalk of each plant, with the other they severed it from the root. The cut plants drying on the tobacco sticks set at intervals along the rows, trailed limply, waiting to be hauled in.
Arrived at the tobacco barn, they found the alfalfa stacked in a close-packed pile in one corner.
"Why, there hain't much hay here!" shouted Uncle Sam, kicking disdainfully into the pile. "It's loose as kin be. There hain't no weight there. It wasn't tromped when it was put in. I bet I cud haul the whole thing away in two loads."
"Two loads!" snorted Uncle Ezra. "Why, Sam Whitmarsh, there's a good seven ton o' hay there if there's a paound. It's packed close as it kin be packed."
Uncle Sam kicked into the hay and succeeded in finding near a crack in the wall a small mildewed spot.
"It's spiled, Ezry, same's I said it was," he shouted triumphantly. "Look ye here! All along these cracks the rain's beat in an' spiled it. An' there's no tellin' haow far that there mildew goes. Spiled alfalfy hain't no good fer nuthin'."
"Now, Sam, there ain't no use in your a-talkin' on like that," said Uncle Ezra in the tone of one who deals with facts. "You know well nuf there hain't but a handful of it in that corner that's been teched by rain."
"An' see here," went on Sam, "this hay must o' laid two or three days afore you raked it. Why, half the leaves is off. An' I bet it had a rain onto it, too, while it laid on the graound. Look what a dark color it is. Good alfalfy hain't that color."
"It didn't lay ner it didn't see no rain," exclaimed Uncle Ezra, his voice harsh with indignation. "You know yerse'f, Sam, I cut an' hauled that hay latter part of las' July; an'there didn't a drop o' rain fall after the ninth. The alfalfy's a good color if ye see it in the light."
"Looks to me like it's a bit woody," mused Uncle Sam, rubbing a scrap between his thumb and forefinger. "An' here's seed on some of it. You was a bit late a-cuttin' this hay, Ezry."
"Naow, Sam Whitmarsh, you know well's I do, I cut this here hay in the bloom." Uncle Ezra's hands were beginning to tremble with exasperation. "Why, I 'member you come by one Friday when we was a-cuttin' an' you said what fine alfalfy that was."
"Haow do I know this is the same alfalfy, Ezry?" queried Uncle Sam, darting a swift look from his keen blue eyes. "Don't look to me like it is. An' I see jes lots o' weeds through it, too. Part of it hain't good fer nuthin but beddin'. Well, Ezry," with the tone of one coming at last to the crucial point, "what're you a-askin' for it?"
There was a long, ruminating pause. The subject of price could not be approached without deliberation befitting its importance.
"Waal," hesitated Uncle Ezra at last, "you've said every dirty thing you kin think of to say about the hay. But the hay's good hay jes the same; an' you know it well's I do. An' if I had a place to put it I wouldn't sell you nary pound of it fer no money. But bein' as haow I gotta have the room in the barn, I'll take forty-five dollars, an' you do the haulin'. An' that's dern cheap hay I'm a-offerin' you."
"Cheap, Ezry! Before you'll git anybody to give you forty-five dollars fer that there little mangerful o' spiled hay, your new barn'll fall to pieces from old age. An' I guess neither you ner me'll be here to see that happen, Ezry. Be reasonable now, Ezry. You know there hain't but a ton an' a half there. I'll give you twenty dollars fer this here little handful o' hay a-laying before us. An' that's a-payin' you twict over."
"Twenty dollars!" shrieked Uncle Ezra. "Why, there's seven good ton o' hay there. An' hay's worth sixteen dollars a ton at the cheapest. I ain't wishin' to give the hay away. Ifevery leaf of it was spiled it'd be worth more'n that to me to put under my grapes an' peach trees."
"All right, Ezry. Like enough you'd best use it fer that. 'Tain't no good fer nuthin but manure an' beddin' anyway. I don't know as I'd want to bother hookin' up to haul it away."
Uncle Sam made as though to leave the barn.
Ezra weakened. He was very anxious to get rid of the hay; he needed the barn at once for his tobacco. And buyers for hay, he knew too well, were not to be readily found at this time of year. Also he knew from sad experience the effect of alfalfa upon tobacco when the two were left in the same barn together. He had been prepared to make some sacrifice; but he shrank from making the sacrifice that Sam demanded of him. Because, what would Aunt Eppie say?
He turned away shaking his head with a final movement, as though negotiations were ended. But Uncle Sam, casting at him a searching, sidewise glance, saw the look of irresolution pass across his face.
"You won't take twenty, eh, Ezry? Then what will you take?"
There was a long pause.
"Waal, I'll take thirty."
The four words dragged themselves with the greatest reluctance from Uncle Ezra's lips.
There was another long pause. Uncle Sam spat deliberately, took a fresh chew of tobacco, and looked out across the landscape meditatively through the big barn doors.
"I tell ye, Ezry," he said at last with great deliberation. "Nobody hain't a-buyin' hay this time o' year. An' if you leave the hay here an' put yer terbaccer in, the terbaccer'll like enough heat an' spile. An' even if it don't heat an' spile, it'll turn dark, sure's yer shirt's on yer back. An' you know what price dark terbaccer fetches. Naow, Ezry, seem' we've allus been good neighbors together, I'm willin' to split the diff'rence with ye. Twenty-seven fifty I'll pay ye right here in cold cash. Will ye take it?"
Uncle Ezra looked beaten and utterly miserable. "Oh, I s'pose so," he grunted at last.
Uncle Sam had come prepared to clinch matters. He pulled out from his hip pocket a roll of bills, selected two tens, a five, and a two; then fished around among his loose change till he found a fifty-cent piece, and laid the whole in Uncle Ezra's reluctant, yet eager, hand.
Aunt Eppie was waiting anxiously for the result. She had watched the men set out together.
"Did he buy it, Ezry?" she queried excitedly, as soon as her husband appeared in the dooryard.
"Yump."
"Haow much did he give fer it?"
"Twenty-seven fifty."
"Twenty-seven fifty! Do you mean to tell me, Ezry Pettit, you sold that five ton o' good hay fer twenty-seven dollars an' fifty cents, an' hay worth sixteen dollars a ton if it's worth a dollar! The poorhouse is where we'll all end up if that's the way you're a-goin' to go on!"
"Waal, I had to git shet of it; an' nobody's a-buyin' hay naow."
Uncle Ezra was too sick at heart to enter into a quarrel. He walked away as the easiest way of ending the argument, disgusted at the unreasonableness of womankind.
Uncle Sam, the veteran bargain driver, was as gratified as a boy who has just traded a watch that won't go for a shotgun that will. It was a feather in his cap to get the better of old Ezra Pettit. He bragged about it far and near and received congratulations from all the neighbors. There was nobody for ten miles around who did not enjoy a joke at the expense of Uncle Ezra. Being a wag, Uncle Sam could not resist the temptation to get some fun out of his deal. So he hauled the hay away in many lightly-piled loads, craftily built to look much larger than they really were. These loads got on Aunt Eppie's nerves. When the eleventh load trundled by the kitchen window, she shrieked hysterically: "Well, Ezra, ye might as well lock the doors an' pull daown the blinds! Thepoorhouse is the place fer us! There goes Sam Whitmarsh with another load o' hay!"
Judith tittered immoderately behind the pantry door. But Cissy, being a serious and right-minded servant and a stranger to a sense of humor, felt deeply concerned at the loss of her master and mistress, considering it in some degree her own.
They had a long, beautiful fall that year. The warm, still sunny days followed each other week after week without a break, until it seemed as if there could never be wind again nor rain nor snow. In the mornings when Judith stepped out into the yard the grass was covered with flimsy gossamer webs encrusted with dewdrops, each one a rainbow in the sun. The beds of geraniums and the bank of scarlet sage along the stone wall seemed to grow each day a richer red. The morning glory vines over the back porch were full each morning with fresh bloom. In colors from faint blue to deep purple, from pale pink to rich rose, delicately veined and gleaming faërily with dew, they lifted up their frail cups to the sun that in a few hours would bring them death. Judith loved to look at the morning glories; yet they gave her a feeling of sadness. They were very silent, these mornings. No birds spilled music into the sunshine. Only a few crows cawed over distant fields. It had been a bountiful year and maturity and plenty were on every hand. The geese, the turkeys, and the chickens were full grown and the proud young males were fat and ready for the market. The hogs in the pen were getting all they could eat. Often they were too lazy to stand up to eat and munched their corn lolling luxuriously on their haunches. Much of their time they spent in sleeping. When they awoke they stretched, snorted, and rolled blissfully in the mud and straw, feeling the warmth of the sun on their bodies and the satisfying comfort of a full belly. By Thanksgiving they would be ready for the butcher's knife. There was a great abundance of tomatoes, cabbages, pumpkins, cornfield beans, everything that flourishes in the good clay soil of Scott County. Corn had been good and the cribs were full. Tobacco had beenextra good and Uncle Ezra's great barns were packed to the doors and filled the air about them with exotic fragrance.
There was much pickling, preserving, and canning done in Aunt Eppie's kitchen, for she hated to see anything go to waste. The savory smell of catsup and chili sauce in the making and of vinegar cooking with spices to pickle the pears and peaches streamed out of the door and whetted the appetite of passers-by. It was impossible for Aunt Eppie's family to consume all these bottled delicacies during the winter. Hence her cellar was crowded with the accumulation of many years. Still she insisted on making more each year. When the plenitude of peaches or grapes or cucumbers was so great that it was a human impossibility to can them all, she gave of her surplus to the tenants, grudgingly, yet with a certain Lady Bountiful pleasure in bestowing favors, and always with many admonitions as to the sin of improvidence.
"It's a sin for sech things to go to waste," she would say. "I'm sure I've give away twenty bushel this year if I've give one. An' all the tenants could have 'em jes as plentiful as us if they'd only plant 'em an' tend 'em. I do think it's a shame for folks to live like hawgs from hand to mouth an' never plant a tree ner a bush ner hardly a tater to put in their mouths. Jes look at all these tenant houses! Not a fruit tree ner a berry bush ner hardly as much as a row o' beets an' cabbages! The shiftlessness of some folks is sech that it's a wonder the Lord A'mighty don't send a plague on 'em."
As the weeks went by Jerry began to follow Judith with his eyes and to think about her when she was not in sight. She seemed to have become all at once a much more interesting person than the little black-haired tomboy that he had played and quarreled with ever since he could remember. One October evening when he came up from work and Judith was in the barnyard milking, he lingered about after putting up the horses, pretending to tinker with the harness. It was past the time to go home and he was hungry as a bear; but something held him. Judith got up from the red and white cow and went to the Jersey, the milking stool in one hand, the bucketin the other. Jerry followed her with his eyes. She had on an old blue cotton dress with a long tear in one sleeve and her arms and neck were bare. Her arms and neck looked very beautiful to Jerry.
When she had finished milking the Jersey she got up, kicked the milking stool over toward the fence where the cows would not step on it, and turning to go to the house saw Jerry still pretending to work with the harness.
"Well, Jerry Blackford, hain't you got started fer home yet! Haow long d'ye think yer mammy'll keep yer supper hot fer ye?"
"Till I git there," answered Jerry, coming up beside her.
The horses, as soon as the harness fell from them, had gone at once to the horsepond and taken a long, satisfying drink, then trotted back to the barn to munch the good alfalfa hay that Jerry had pitched down for them. It had been a warm, lazy day. The sun had just set and the evening was still, blue and luminous. Three two-year-old colts that had been brought up for the night, feeling the stimulation of the cool air, began to frolic about the barnyard. They began by rolling in the loose straw and chaff, turning over and over on their backs and waving their hoofs foolishly in the air. Then one colt scrambled to his feet and raced to the gate, the others after him. Back they came from the road gate to the other gate leading into the field, then round and round the barnyard snorting and neighing, their heads and tails high, their manes flowing, their hoofs pounding rhythmically, their beautiful, strong, sleek bodies taut with the joy of the gallop. The work team, having eaten a good supper, trotted out from the barn and joined in the fun with as much zest as the colts.
In the middle of the barnyard stood Charlie, Uncle Ezra's old white mule. He was too old to do much work and was usually left out at pasture. To-night Uncle Ezra had brought him up because he was going to use him in the morning to help haul in corn fodder. Being old and white, he always looked rough and dirty; and he had an ugly bare spot on one shoulder where the harness had rubbed off the hair. His under lip hadgrown loose and flabby and sagged down, giving his face a sullen look. Isolated by his age and his kind, he stood perfectly motionless, his knees bent like those of an old man, his head low, his haunches slack, his whole body sagging, and took not the least notice of the horses galloping about him. In joyous madcap career they raced in front of him, behind him, all around him; but he neither stirred nor raised his head.
"That's haow folks is when they git old," said Jerry, looking meditatively at the ancient beast.
"Yaas, an' ain't he for all the world like Uncle Ezry? Seems to me them two has growed to look alike, they bin so long together."
"The colts hates him 'cause he's old and 'cause he's a mule," mused Jerry, "an' he hates the colts 'cause they won't leave him have no peace."
Judith had taken from the pocket of her dress a stub of green crayon and begun to draw on the whitewashed fence post. Jerry watched her and saw the profile of Uncle Ezra appear in green on the white post, then beside it the profile of Charlie the mule. She had skilfully modified the features just enough to best bring out the points of resemblance.
"See, hain't they like as twins? They're both the same dirty gray color, both got the same hangin' under lip an' hook nose an' the same big ears."
"An' both is deaf as posts," laughed Jerry.
Judith had her back to him admiring her handiwork. He wanted to lean forward and kiss the white nape of her neck. Instead, he turned about and started off for home.
* * * * * * *
A little before Thanksgiving there came a cold, heavy rain, then a blighting frost that killed the morning glories and the geraniums and blackened everything in the garden except the beets and cabbages. A strong, cold wind blew the trees bare in a single night, and the whole aspect of the world was changed. Two days ago it had been summer. Now it was winter.
It was not so pleasant for Judith at Aunt Eppie's after thecold weather came. Driven in for warmth from the deserted and windswept barnyard, she found little to interest her in the stuffy, overheated kitchen or the bare, cold bedroom that she shared with Cissy. As the days grew colder, the sitting room took the place of the porch. Here a hideous product of modernity known as a "base burner" was pressed into service. It stood on a square of ornamental zinc placed over the rag carpet and kept clean and shiny by Cissy's floor rag. It was covered with knobs and scrolls and glorious with polished nickel. All around its fat belly it had several rows of little mica windows. When a fire was lighted in this gorgeous crematory and fed with a bucket of cannel coal, mined in the neighboring state of West Virginia, it made the room so hot that Judith had to gasp for breath.
As the days grew colder, Uncle Ezra spent more and more of his time sitting silently with his feet on the fender of the majestic base burner.
The afternoons were short now, and it was night long before the chores were done. The last thing at night Judith had to milk the cows, feed the pigs and calves and shut up the chickens. When at last she came in shivering out of the dark and cold, there was no steaming hot coffee waiting to hearten her, no bacon sizzling in the pan, no biscuits fluffy and fragrant from the oven. The deserted kitchen was bleak in its chilly neatness and a leftover meal was coldly set forth on the table in the sitting room: cold vegetables and bacon left from dinner, cold biscuits and corn cakes, cold water and cold skim milk to drink, a cheerless and uninviting spread. This had been Aunt Eppie's custom from the beginning of time, and there was never any breach in its observance. As soon as the great base burner of the sitting room was put into operation, the kitchen fire was allowed to go out immediately after dinner, and it was not lighted again until next morning. Aunt Eppie, in explaining this custom, always made a great deal of the fact that it saved work for Cissy. What of course it did save was fuel. A tiny lamp set in the middle of this chill-inspiring table irritated the eyes with its feeble glare andserved only to make darkness visible. Aunt Eppie possessed a large, round-burner lamp with a polished nickel bowl and a "hand painted" china shade. This lamp was a present from one of her married children. She prized it greatly but never lighted its oil-consuming wick except when she had visitors of importance.
When the silent and cheerless supper was over and the dishes gathered up and washed, everybody went immediately to bed.
"Never be out o' bed at eight ner in at five," was Aunt Eppie's oft repeated motto; and winter and summer this rule was rigidly observed. In the bitter winter mornings as well as in the radiant dawns of summer, the whole family turned out at a quarter to five. They ate breakfast by lamplight. Then while Cissy and Judith washed the dishes, Aunt Eppie and Uncle Ezra sat over the base burner waiting for daylight. With no light in the room but the glow from the mica windows of the stove, the two old people sat in unbroken silence, slaves to their lifelong habit of thrift.
The dreary monotony of this manner of life soon palled upon Judith and she decided to leave Aunt Eppie's service.
"I'm a-goin' back home nex' Satiddy, Aunt Eppie," announced Judith, when one Saturday evening she received her dollar as usual.
"What, a-goin' home, Judy! There hain't nuthin fer you to do at home, an' you won't be earnin' a cent of money. What's the idee of a-goin' back home?"
Judith looked straight at Aunt Eppie with her dark, level eyes.
"I'm a-goin' home 'cause I want to," she said with unashamed simplicity.
"You'd best stay right where you are," advised Aunt Eppie. "Look at Cissy that's been a-workin' for me so long, haow well fixed she is. She's got money loaned out an' a-bringin' her in five per cent interest. You could do jes as well as her if you'd be willin' to stay here an' tend your work, 'stead o' goin' off an' a-loafin' round yer dad's place an' finallya-marryin' some good-fer-nuthin tenant farmer. You'd best stay here, Judy, an' learn to be a good thrifty housekeeper like Cissy."
Aunt Eppie said this last with a certain clinching finality, as though it had been quite decided that Judith was to stay. A more timid and impressionable girl might have been influenced. But Judith, heeding only her own inner promptings, could be neither tempted nor bullied by Aunt Eppie. When the following Saturday arrived she collected her dollar, packed her satchel, climbed onto a wagon that was passing on the way back from Sadieville and was jolted toward home.
Aunt Eppie looked after her with an aggrieved expression.
"That's jes haow it allus is," she remarked to the faithful Cissy, as they turned back together into the kitchen. "They hain't got no notion what's good for 'em. You no sooner get 'em trained into your ways than they're up an' gone. Thankless an' shiftless—all of 'em."
She went back to her sewing in disgust, meditating bitterly that they would now have to pay a male hired man four times what they had been paying to Judith.
Judith was glad to get back to the humbler but warmer atmosphere at home, and the folks were glad to have her back. She made Bill and the boys roar again and slap their sides with delight when she imitated Aunt Eppie's shriek of terror at the fear of the poorhouse. She spread out on the table her accumulated wealth amounting to sixteen dollars; and delighted the twins with a present of three dollars each to buy them stuff for a new dress. To Elmer she gave a dollar to buy him a popgun and reserved the rest of the money to spend riotously on clothes for herself.
"An' we'll all have new dresses for the party," exulted Lizzie May. "Poolers is a-going to have a party Christmas Eve an' we're all bid to go. But we'll have to hurry to git the dresses done."
Unable to wait a minute longer, the girls drove to Clayton first thing next morning and selected the material for their dresses. They chose cotton voile as being the prettiest, mostparty-like material to be had for the sum that they were able to spend. Lizzie May selected a delicate pink. Luella's choice was a medium blue with darker blue shadow bars running through it. Judith's was a red and white check. They were delighted and voluble over their purchases. They felt gay and festive and full of holiday spirit, like boarding school girls on a visit home. On the way home they all tried to talk at once and laughed so much that Tom and Bob, disturbed by the unusual hilarity behind them, kept looking around inquiringly trying to see what was going on. As they jolted at a fast trot past the Pettit place, Aunt Eppie peered out of the kitchen window.
"There goes them Pippinger girls, an' I'll bet they've spent most every cent Judy's earned while she's been here," she said to Cissy, turning away from the window with her heavy money sigh. "It beats me haow extravagant an' shiftless folks kin be. They don't seem to ever have a thought that there's another day a-comin'."
That very afternoon the girls started to make their dresses. They could hardly wait to eat and wash the dishes.
On Christmas Eve, when they were dressed ready for the party, they felt somehow like different beings, as though they were not workaday people at all but ladies who had always worn new, fluffy dresses, white stockings, and shiny shoes.
It was a drive of three miles to the scene of the party. Then the mules had to be hitched to a fence post at the top of the ridge and the remaining quarter of a mile made on foot. The descent into the hollow where the Pooler house stood was too steep and narrow to attempt with a wagon at night. Tom Pooler, the father of Lizzie May's sweetheart, was a tenant of old Hiram Stone and lived in one of Hiram Stone's tenant houses. Like most of the other tenant houses in Scott County, it was built close to the acres of tobacco land with which it belonged. Proximity to the main road was a matter not taken into account.
By the light of two lanterns the Pippingers proceeded on foot down the steep, scarcely marked wagon track that ledto the house, the girls carefully holding up their skirts and stepping daintily so as to avoid the mud. The night was mild and bright with stars. As they walked a light wind blew in their faces and the dead leaves rustled under their feet. As they approached the house, they saw light shining not only from the windows but from many little square chinks in the walls. The reason for these little golden squares of light dated back to the building of the house several years before. Tom Pooler had made an arrangement with Old Man Stone's overseer to build the house if Stone would supply the lumber. The overseer supplied green lumber. Tom set to work briskly to build the house and soon completed the twelve by fourteen packing case which in that locality is called a house. All went well until the green boards began to shrink. Then Tom approached his landlord's manager in this wise:
"Whatcha gimme green lumber to build that 'ere house fer? The boards is shrunk naow so's a man might jes as well be a-livin' in a corn crib. You could throw a dawg through any o' them there cracks atween them shrunk boards. You'll have to gimme some more lumber to fix it, else I hain't a-goin' to stay on there nary week."
The overseer grudgingly supplied another load of lumber, with which Tom set to work to make the house tight and shipshape. This time he nailed the boards crosswise. They turned out to be as green as the first lot; and in a few months they had shrunk away from each other, leaving the house dotted with little square holes. "I'll fix that," said Tom to himself one Sunday morning, and started toward the corn crib. He soon came back with a wheelbarrow load of corn cobs and started to drive them into the holes and break off the ends. For an hour or so he worked busily driving in cobs and breaking off the ends. When he was called to dinner he surveyed the results of his work and saw that he had mended only a small patch of the great chequered expanse still gaping with holes. In the afternoon he began again, but with diminished energy. Along toward four o'clock the weariness of well doing suddenly came upon him. There were too many holes.
"Aw, hell, let 'er go the way she is," he muttered disgustedly, and felt in his pocket for another chew of tobacco.
It was to this house of many little golden windows that the Pippingers were now coming in the darkness. Arrived at the door, they turned their lanterns low and set them beside several other low-burning lanterns that stood in a little cluster against the house wall. Pushing open the door and entering without knock or ceremony, they found themselves in a stifling hot room crowded with people. The dim glare of two small kerosene lamps seemed a brilliant illumination after the darkness of outside; and for a moment they were dazzled.
Addie Pooler, the eldest girl, came forward and escorted Judith and the twins to a shedlike leanto back of the house where the Pooler boys slept and which was now doing duty as a dressing room. Here the four youngest Pooler children were already asleep all in one bed, two at each end, under a quilt roughly constructed of various sized pieces of dark colored goods cut from the less worn portions of men's old coats and trousers. Several sleeping babies were disposed here and there about the room on improvised beds made of overcoats or lap-robes. The girls put their coats and scarves on another large bed already piled with outdoor clothing, patted their hair a little in front of the small, face-distorting mirror over the chest of drawers, and followed Addie back into the kitchen.
Here the party was not yet under way. The women and girls and small children of both sexes were sitting or standing self-consciously about the walls. For the most part they sat bolt upright and stared straight ahead of them. Now and then they eyed each other covertly. Sometimes a woman would speak to her neighbor in a hushed voice and thus start up a small whispered conversation; but of general talk there was none. Almost all of them, daughters and mothers alike, were painfully thin, with pinched, angular features and peculiarly dead expressionless eyes. The faces of the girls wore already an old, patient, settled look, as though a black dress and a few gray hairs would make them sisters instead of daughters of the older women.
Tom Pooler, the host, a little man, red-faced and choleric like a bantam fighting cock, the possessor of a tremendous ego, sat in a round-backed armchair by the stove and spat tobacco juice into the wood box. His feet in heavy gray cotton socks were comfortably extended upon the fender. He was the center of a group of older men who stood and sat about the stove spitting tobacco juice and discussing the same things that they always did. The young men were nowhere to be seen. They were all standing outside with the lanterns.
All at once the door flew open and Jabez Moorhouse came in with his fiddle.
Jabez was in the best of spirits. He had taken a drop before he started, had had several pulls from the bottle on the way over to keep out the cold, and was feeling in holiday spirit. He was much in demand at gatherings like these on account of his ability to play the fiddle and call off the dances; and his response was usually a ready one. But he never went without a flask of good corn whiskey in his pocket to blur his eyes and his mind and nimble his fingers and his feelings.
"Waal, naow, gals, whatcha doin' here anyway? Settin' all raound solemn, like you was to a buryin'?"
He opened the door and held it open while he called out into the darkness:
"Hi there, you backward young fellers! Air you a-goin' to set aout on the doorstep with the dawgs all night? Come along in here an' pick yer gals fer the fu'st dance."
They came pouring in, elbowing and shoving each other and uttering loud guffaws to cover their embarrassment. They were healthier and less angular than the girls and the look of premature age had not been stamped upon their features.
"Naow then, you good lookin' gals, git up onto the floor; an' if a partner don't pick you, you pick a partner. This here is leap year anyway. Besides it's allus the wimmin that picks the men, though they try to make out it hain't. I say every gal that wants to git a good man step out onto the floor. An' every gal that wants to stay a old maid keep a-settin' by her mammy."
Nobody was offended by the crassness of Jabez' exhortation. It was what they had all been waiting for. This crude joviality and the smell of corn whiskey that was beginning to pervade the atmosphere soon cured the young fellows of their bashfulness, and there was much pulling and pushing of the girls from their seats, which they pretended to wish to retain.
Jabez had stationed himself in a corner and was tuning his fiddle.
"Naow then, all aboard! Form a line daown the middle; a lady an' a gent, a lady an' a gent. Gents to the right, ladies to the lef'. Swing yer partners."
He broke into the tune of one of the square dances familiar in that neighborhood, and the feet of the young men and girls followed him. Awkwardly and haltingly enough they stepped the first figure. The girls, with their angularities sticking out of their skimpy, ill-fitting dresses, moved at first as though from the pulling of wires. The young men slumped and floundered, lost their partners and got tangled up in the chain of dancers and had to be untangled again. As they warmed to the music, however, the feet lightened, the arms limbered, and self-consciousness was forgotten.
The men about the stove kept the fire well stoked and the room grew hotter and hotter, especially to the dancers. Dance followed upon dance. Tobacco smoke and the fumes of corn whiskey filled the stale air. The cheeks of every one were blazing from the heat and closeness. The children in the chairs were all asleep, leaning against their mothers. The older men in the corner by the stove watched the dancers and talked and spat tobacco juice into the wood box. They spat so much tobacco juice that the wood was covered with it. Fortunately it was the spitters who had the job of putting the wood into the stove, so it was their own affair. For the dancing girls in their slippers and light dresses, their feet and hearts beating time to the music, the spit encrusted wood box did not exist. With the beautiful ability of youth to ignore the ugly and sordid, however near at hand, they danced and laughedand coquetted with their partners, feeling in this their hour far removed above the humdrum of their lives.
The two prettiest girls in the room were Bill Pippinger's daughters, Lizzie May and Judith. Lizzie May, with her pale pink dress, cornsilk hair and small, dainty features, made one think of a wild rose. Dan Pooler could not take his eyes from her and insisted on being her partner in every dance, until toward the end of the evening the two disappeared entirely from the dancing floor. Judith in red and white shone in her dark loveliness like a poppy among weeds. Something more than her beauty set her apart from the others: an ease and naturalness of movement, a freedom from constraint, a completeness of abandon to the fun and merrymaking, to which these daughters of toil in their most hectic moments could never attain. Somehow, in spite of her ancestry, she had escaped the curse of the soil, else she could never have known how to be so free, so glad, so careless and joyous.
This difference from the other girls singled her out for comment more than once; and the comment was always adverse, less from maliciousness than from lack of comprehension; although envy, naturally enough, was not absent.
"My sakes, Judy Pippinger'd otta think shame to herse'f," whispered Jenny Whitmarsh to Esther Pooler, "the way she goes on with the fellers!"
"If Judy's poor mammy was alive, she wouldn't like to see her a-goin' on in that way," sighed Aunt Mary Blackford to Aunt Maggie Slatten. "That way o' carryin' on ain't a-goin' to bring her to no good."
The men about the stove had by this time passed the bottle several times and were filled with good feeling and reminiscences, as they watched the dancers passing in a far-off blur. The young men too had occasionally slipped aside to enjoy a swig with a companion, and were becoming bolder and more demonstrative in the dance. From time to time the talk of one of them slipped past the bounds of the decent and caused the cheeks of his partner to flush still redder.
As they danced the old game of "Skip to ma Loo," everybody sang noisily: