Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

THE ANNALS OF ANN

Ann

The Annals of Ann

By KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER

With Four Illustrations
By PAUL J. MEYLAN

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Copyright 1910
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

THE ANNALS OF ANN

CHAPTER I

My Cousin Eunice is a grown young lady and she keeps a diary, which put the notion into my head of keeping one too.

There are two kinds of people that keep diaries, married ones and single ones. The single ones fill theirs full of poetry; the married ones tell how much it costs to keep house.

Not being extra good in grammar and spelling, I thought I'd copy a few pages out of Cousin Eunice's diary this morning as a pattern to keep mine by, but I was disappointed. Nearly every page I turned to in hers was filled full of poetry, which stuff never did make good sense to me, besides the trouble it puts you to by having to start every line with a fresh capital.

Cousin Eunice says nearly all famous people keep a diary for folks to read after they're dead. I always did admire famous people, especially Lord Byron and Columbus. And I've often thought I should like to be a famous person myself when I get grown. I don't care so much about graduating in white mull, trimmed in lace, as some girls do, for the really famous never graduate. They get expelled from college for writing little books saying there ain't any devil. But I should love to be a beautiful opera singer, with a jasmine flower at my throat, and a fresh duke standing at the side door of the theater every night, begging me to marry him. Or I'd like to rescue a ship full of drowning people, then swim back to shore and calmly squeeze the salt water out of my bathing suit, so the papers would all be full of it the next morning.

Things don't turn out the way you expect them to, though, and I needn't count too much on these things. I might catch cold in my voice, or cramps in the sea and never get famous; but I'm going to keep this diary anyhow, and just hand it down to my grandchildren, for nearly every lady can count on them, whether she's famous or infamous.

Maybe some rainy day, a hundred years from now, a little girl will find this book in the attic, all covered with dust, and will sit down and read it, while the rain sounds soft and pattery on the outside, and her mother calls and calls without getting an answer. This is not at all the right way to do, but what can they expect of you when your attic is such a very delicious place? Ours is high enough not to bump your head, even if you are as tall as my friend, Rufe Clayborne, and where a part of the window-pane is broken out an apple-tree sends in a perky little branch. Just before Easter every year I spend nearly all my time up here at this window, for the apple blossoms seem to have so many things to say to me; lovely things, that I can feel, but can not hear, and if I could write them down this would be the most beautiful book in the world. And great sheets of rain come sometimes; you can see them coming from the hills back of Mr. Clayborne's house, but the apple blossoms don't mind the wetting.

When I wrote "Mr. Clayborne" just then it reminded me of Cousin Eunice's diary. That was one sensible word which was on every page. Sometimes it was mixed up close along with the poetry, but I always knew who she meant, for he is my best friend and the grandest young man I've ever seen out of a book. His other name is Rufe, and he's an editor when he's in the city. But before he got to be an editor he was born across the creek from our farm, and we've always been great friends. His father and mine are also friends, always quarreling about whose bird-dogs and hotbeds are the best; and our mothers talk a heap about "original sin" and chow-chow pickle.

Maybe my grandchildren would like to know a few little things about me at the time I started keeping this diary for their sakes, so I'll stop now and tell them as quickly as I can, for I never did think just my own self was so interesting. If they have any imagination they can tell pretty well what kind of a person I was anyhow from the grand portrait I'm going to have painted for them in the gown I wear when I'm presented at court.

Well, I was born in the year—but if I tell that you will know exactly how old I am, that is if you can count things better than I can. Anyhow, when I read a thing I'd rather they didn't tell just how old the heroine is. Then you can have her any age you like best. Maybe if I were to tell exactly how many birthdays I've had you would always be saying, like mother and Mammy Lou, "You're a mighty big girl to be doing such silly things." Or like Rufe says sometimes, "Ann, you're entirely too young to be interested in such subjects as that." So you will have to be satisfied when I tell you that I'm at the "gawky age." And a person is never surprised at anything that a girl at the "gawky age" does.

I am little enough still to love puppies and big enough to love Washington Irving. You might think these don't mix well, but they do. On rainy mornings I like to take a puppy under one arm and The Alhambra under the other, with eight or ten apples in my lap, and climb up in the loft to enjoy the greatest pleasure of my life. I sling The Alhambra up on the hay first, then ease the puppy up and take the hem of my skirt between my teeth so the apples won't spill out while I go up after them. But I never even look at hay when there's a pile of cottonseed to wallow in.

As to my ways, I'm sorry to say that I'm what mother calls a "peculiar child." Mammy says I'm "the curiousest mixtry she ever seen." That's because I ask "Why?" very often and then lots of times don't exactly believe that things are that way when they're told to me. One day at Sunday-school, when I was about four, the teacher was telling about Jonah. Mother often told me tales, some that I called "make-believe," and others that I called "so tales." When the teacher got through I spoke up and asked her if that was a "so tale." She said yes, it was, but I horrified every other child in the class by speaking up again and saying, "Well, me don't believe it!"

Old as I am now, I don't see how Jonah's constitution could have stood it, but I've got sense enough to believe many a thing that I can't see nor smell nor feel. An old man out in the mountains that had never been anywhere might say he didn't believe in electricity, but that wouldn't keep your electric light bill from being more than you thought it ought to be at the end of the month.

Speaking of bills reminds me of father. Father is not a rich man, but his folks used to be before the war. That's the way with so many people around here, they have more ancestry than anything else. Still, we have perfectly lovely smelling old leather books in our library, and when cotton goes high we go up to the city and take a suite of rooms with a bath.

I am telling you all this, my grandchildren, to let you know that you have blue blood in your veins, but you mustn't let yours get too blue. Father says it takes a dash of red blood mixed with blue, like turpentine with paint, to make it go.

Still, I hope the old place will be just as beautiful when my grandchildren get old enough to appreciate it as it is now, and not be sold and turned into a sanitarium, or a girls' school. The walls of the house are a soft grayish white, like a dear old grandmother's hair; and the mycravella roses in the far corner of the yard put such notions into your head! There are rows of cedar trees down the walk, planted before Andrew Jackson's time; and at night there are the stars. I love stars, especially Venus; but there are a lot of others that I don't know the names of.

Inside, the house is cool and shady; and you can always find a place to lie down and read. Cousin Eunice says so many people spoil their houses by selecting carpets and wall-paper that look like they want to fight. But ours is not like that. Some corners in our library look like Ladies' Own Journal pictures.

Cousin Eunice doesn't belong to our house, but I wish she did, for she's as beautiful as a magazine cover. And I think we have the nicest home in the world. Besides being old and big and far back in the yard, there's always the smell of apples up-stairs. And I'm sure mother is the nicest lady in the world. She wants everybody to have a good time, and no matter whether you're a man, a young lady, or a little girl, she lets you scatter your pipes, love-letters and doll-rags from the front gate to the backest chicken-coop without ever fussing. Mother admires company greatly. She doesn't have to perspire over them herself, though, for she has Mammy Lou to do all the cooking and Dilsey to make up the beds. So she invited Cousin Eunice to spend the summer with us and asked Bertha, a cousin on the other side, to come at the same time, for she said girls love to be together. We soon found out, though, that some girls do and some don't.

Cousin Eunice said I might always express my frank opinion of people and things in my diary, so I take pleasure in starting in on Bertha. Bertha, she is a cat! Even Rufe called her one the night she got here. Not a straight-out cat, exactly, but he called her a kitten!

You see, when Bertha was down here on a little visit last year she and Rufe had up a kind of summer engagement. A summer engagement is where the girl wears the man's fraternity pin instead of a ring. And when she came again this time it didn't take them two hours to get summer engaged again, it being moonlight on the front porch and Bertha looking real soft and purry.

Then the very next week Cousin Eunice came! And poor Rufe! We all felt so sorry for him, for, from the first minute he looked at her he was in love; and it's a terrible thing to be in love and engaged at the same time, when one is with one girl and the other to another! And it was so plain that the eyes of the potatoes could see it! But Bertha hadn't an idea of giving up anybody as good-looking as Rufe to another somebody as good-looking as Cousin Eunice, which mother said was a shame, and she never did such a thing when she was a girl; but Mammy Lou said it was no more than Rufe deserved for not being more careful.

But anyway, Cousin Eunice and Bertha hadn't been together two days before they hated each other so they wouldn't use the same powder rag! They just couldn't bear the sight of each other because they could both bear the sight of Rufe so well. This was a disappointment to me, for I had hoped they would go into each other's rooms at night and brush their hair, half undressed, and have as good a time as the pictures of ladies in underwear catalogues always seem to be having. But they are not at all friendly. They have never even asked each other what make of corsets they wear, nor who operated on them for appendicitis. Bertha talks a great deal about Rufe and how devoted he was to her last summer, but Cousin Eunice won't talk at all when Bertha's around. She sits still and looks dumb and superior as a trained nurse does when you are trying to find out what it is that the patient has got.

Cousin Eunice has a right to act superior, though, for while other girls are spending their time embroidering chafing-dish aprons she is studying books written by a man with a name like a sneeze. Let me get one of the books to see how it is spelled. N-i-e-t-z-s-c-h-e! There! I got it down at last! And Cousin Eunice doesn't have just a plain parlor at home to receive her beaux in; she has a studio. A studio is a room full of things that catch dust. And the desire of her life is to write a little brown-backed book that people will fill full of pencil marks and always carry around with them in their suit-cases. She doesn't neglect her outside looks, though, just because her mind is so full of great thoughts. No indeed! Her fountain pen jostles against her looking-glass in her hand-bag, and her note-book gets dusted over with pink powder.

Now, Bertha is entirely different! No matter how the sun is shining outside she spends all her mornings up in her room shining her finger-nails; and she wears pounds and pounds of hair on the back of her head. Father says the less a girl has on the inside the more she will stick on the outside of her head, and lots of men can't tell the difference. Bertha certainly isn't at a loss for lovers. She gets a great many letters from a "commercial traveler." A "commercial traveler" is a man who writes to his girl on different hotel paper every day. These letters are a great comfort to her spirit when Rufe acts so loving around Cousin Eunice; and she always has one sticking in her belt when Rufe is near by, with the name of the hotel showing.

Every night just before or just after supper I always go out to the kitchen and tell Mammy Lou all the news I've seen or heard that day. She laughs when I tell her about how Bertha is trying to hold on to Rufe.

"'Tain't a speck o' use," she said to-night so emphatically that I was afraid the omelette would fall. "Why, a camel can dance a Virginny reel in the eye of a needle quicker than a gal can sick a man back to lovin' her after he's done took a notion to change the picture he wears in his watch!"

Mammy told the truth, I'm sure, for Bertha has worn all her prettiest dresses and done her hair two new ways, trying to get him back; but he is still "coldly polite," which I think is the meanest way on earth to treat a person. Not that Bertha doesn't deserve it, for she knew they were just joking about that summer engagement, but she still wears the fraternity pin, which of course causes Cousin Eunice to be "coldly polite" to Rufe; and altogether we don't really need a refrigerator in the house this summer.

Mammy Lou and I had been trying to think up a plan to thaw out the atmosphere, but this morning a way was provided, and I greatly enjoyed being "an humble instrument," as Brother Sheffield says.

Everything was draggy this morning. Bertha was down in the parlor singing "popular songs" very loud as I came down the steps with my diary in my hand. I despise popular songs! As I went past the kitchen door on my way to the big pear tree which I meant to climb and write in my book I saw that Mammy Lou was having the time of her life telling Cousin Eunice all about when Rufe was a baby. She had called her in there to get some fresh buttermilk, and Cousin Eunice was drinking glass after glass of it with such a rapt look on her face I knew she didn't realize that she couldn't get on her tight clothes till mid-afternoon.

"Of course he's a extry fine young man!" mammy said, dipping for another glassful. "There never was nary finer baby—an' wasn't I right there when Mr. Rufe was born?"

"Sure enough!" Cousin Eunice said, looking entranced.

This wasn't much more entertaining to me than Bertha's singing, for I had heard it all so many times before, so I went out to the pear tree and climbed up, but I couldn't think of even one word that would be of interest to my grandchildren. So I just wrote my name over and over again on the fly-pages. I wonder what makes them call them "fly-pages?" Then I closed my book and climbed down again. I started back to the house by the side way, and met Rufe coming up the walk toward the front door.

"Hello, Rufe," I said, running to meet him and walking with him to the front steps. "I'm so glad to see you. Everything is so draggy this morning. Won't you sit on the steps and talk to me a while? Or are you in a hurry?"

"I'm always in a hurry when I'm going to your house," he answered with a look in the direction of Cousin Eunice's window. "And my visits always seem as short as a wedding journey when the bridegroom's salary is small."

He dusted off the step, though, and sat down; and I told him that Cousin Eunice was drinking buttermilk in her kimono and wouldn't be in a mood to dress for another hour. Then I told him what a hard time I'd had trying to think up something interesting to write in my diary. He said, looking again toward Cousin Eunice's window, that there was only one thing in the world to write about! But he supposed I was too young to know anything about that. I spoke up promptly and told him a girl never got too young to know about love.

"Love!" he said, trying to look surprised. "Who mentioned love?"

Just then I heard the flutteration of a silk petticoat on the porch behind the vines, but Rufe was gazing so hard at the blue hills on the far side of town that he didn't hear it. So, without saying anything to him, I leaned over far enough to look under the banisters, and saw the bottom of Bertha's skirt and a skein of blue silk thread lying on the floor. So I knew she was sitting there working on that everlasting chafing-dish apron. Then Satan put an idea into my head. I think it was Satan.

"Rufe," I said, talking very loud and quick, so Bertha would just have to hear me, "what's the difference between a kitten and a cat?"

Rufe at last got his eyes unfixed from the blue hills and just stared at me foolishly for a second.

"Am I the parent of a child that I should have to answer fool questions?" he said.

"But the night she came you called Bertha a kitten!" I reminded him, and he looked worse surprised. "And since I've heard her called a cat! How long does it take a kitten to grow into a cat?"

"Oh, I see! Well, I'm better versed in feline ways now than I was that night; so I might state that sometimes you discover that a kitten is a cat! There isn't any difference!"

We heard a clattering noise behind the vines just then, which I knew was Bertha dropping her embroidery scissors. Rufe jumped, for he had no idea anybody was hearing our conversation; and I know he wouldn't have said what he did about cats except he thought I was too little to understand such figures of speech. Then he got up to go in and see who it was. And I decided to disappear around the corner of the house. I didn't altogether disappear before I heard her say indeed he had meant to call her a cat; and he said indeed he hadn't, but she hadn't been "square" with him, and they talked and talked until I got uneasy that Cousin Eunice would be coming through the hall and hear them. So I hurried on back to head her off. But Satan, or whoever it was, put me up to a good job in that, for the next time I saw Rufe he was wearing his fraternity pin and a happy smile. And Bertha had red spots on her face, even as late as dinner-time, like consumption that lovely heroines die of.

I've been too disappointed lately to write in my diary. Somehow, I think like Rufe, that there's only one thing worth writing about, and there's been very little in that line going on around here lately. Poor Rufe is having a harder time now than he had when Bertha was on his hands, for Cousin Eunice has taken it into her head to show him that she doesn't have to accept him the minute he gets untangled from a summer flirtation. Those were her very words.

She and I go for long walks with him every morning, down through the ravine; and they read poetry that sounds so good you feel like somebody's scratching your back. And she wears her best-fitting shirtwaists. One good thing about Cousin Eunice is that her clothes never look like she'd sat up late the night before to make them. And when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's been married a heap more times than mother ever has.

"The longer you keep a man feelin' like he's on a red-hot stove the better he loves you," Mammy Lou told Cousin Eunice to-night, as she was powdering her face for the last time before going down-stairs and trying to keep us from seeing that she was listening for a footstep on the gravel walk. "An' a husban's got to be treated jus' like a lover! A good, heavy poker's a fine thing to make a husban' know 'is place—an' Lawk! a lazy husban's like a greasy churn—you have to give him a thorough scaldin' to do any good!"

This morning at the breakfast table, after father had helped the plates to chicken, saving two gizzards for me, he said: "Times have changed since I was a young man!"

As this wasn't exactly the first time we had heard such a remark none of us paid any attention to it until we saw mother trying to make him hush. Then we knew he must be starting to say something funny about Cousin Eunice and Rufe, for mother always stops him on this subject whenever she can, because she doesn't want Bertha's feelings hurt. But Bertha never seems to mind. She's decided to marry the commercial traveler, I'm almost sure, although her people say he's not "steady." Steady means staying still, so who ever heard of a traveling man who was steady?

"Times have changed, especially about courting," father kept on, pretending that he didn't see mother shaking her head at him. When father gets that twinkle in his eye he can't see anything else. "Now in my young days when a girl and a fellow looked good to each other they usually got engaged at once. But now—jumping Jerusalem! No matter how deeply in love they are they waste days and days trying to get a 'complete understanding' of each other's nature. They talk about their opinion of everything under the sun, from woman's suffrage to Belshazzar's feast."

"Lord Byron wrote a piece in the Fifth Reader about Belshazzar's feast," I started to remark, but I remembered in time to hush, for I've never been able to mention Lord Byron's name to my family in any peace since they found that I keep a vase of flowers in front of his picture all the time. They call him my beau—the beautiful creature!

Father didn't notice my remark, however. He was too busy with his own. "And instead of exchanging locks of hair, as they used to when Mary and I were young, they give each other limp-backed books that have 'helped to shape their career,' and beg that they will mark the passages that impress them!"

"Uncle Dan, you've been eavesdropping!" Cousin Eunice said, looking up from her hot biscuit and honey long enough to smile at him, but she didn't quit eating. It has got out of style to stop eating when you're in love, for a man admires a healthy-looking girl. I know a young man who had been going to see a girl for a long time and never did propose. She was a pretty girl, too, slender and wild-rosy-looking. Well, she took a trip to Germany one summer and drank so much of something fattening over there that the wild-rose look changed to American beauty; and when she came home in the fall the young man was so delighted with her looks that he turned in and married her before Christmas!

Cousin Eunice knows these people too, and she does all she can to keep her digestion good, even to fresh milk and raw eggs. I hope I can get married without the raw eggs part of it. And she tramps all over the woods for the sake of her appetite in stylish-looking tan boots.

As we left the dining-room I noticed that she had on her walking-boots and a short skirt, so I thought Rufe would be along pretty soon for us to go down to the ravine and read poetry. They always take me along because I soon get enough of the poetry and go off to wade in the branch, leaving them on their favorite big gray rock.

Sure enough, Rufe wasn't long about coming, and I saw that his limp-backed book was labeled "Keats" this morning. Cousin Eunice didn't have a book. She carried a parasol. A parasol is used to jab holes in the sand when you're being made love to.

I don't know why I should have felt so, but just as soon as they got started to reading this morning I had a curious feeling, like you have when the lights burn low on the stage and the orchestra begins The Flower Song. The way they looked at each other made under my scalp tingle. Now, if I ever have a granddaughter that doesn't have this feeling in the presence of great things I shall disinherit her and leave my diamonds to a society for tuberculosis or pure food or fresh air, or some of those charitable things.

Before long they branched off from Keats to Shelley, and Rufe didn't need a book with him. Just after he had finished a little verse beginning, "I can not give what men call love," I had sense enough to get up and go away from them. Although I have always been crazy to see a proposal, there was something in the atmosphere around that old gray rock that made me feel as if I were treading on sacred ground. (I hate to use expressions like this, that everybody else uses, but I can't think of anything else and it's getting too late to sit here by myself and try.) Anyhow it's the feeling you have when you go into a cathedral with stained glass windows. So I went away from them, but not very far away, just a little distance, to where I have a lovely pile of moss collected on the north side of a big tree. And the smotheration around my heart kept up.

It seemed to me the longest time before anything happened, for Cousin Eunice was jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol like she was being paid to do it by the hour. Finally, without any ado, he put his hands on hers and made her stop.

Jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol

"Sweetheart," I heard him say, so low that I could hardly hear, for The Flower Song was buzzing through my head so loud. Then he seemed to remember me for he looked around, and, seeing that I was clear gone, he said it again, "Sweetheart." She looked up at him when he said it, and looked and looked! Maybe she never had realized before just how big and broad-shouldered and brown-eyed Rufe really is! Neither one of them said anything, but he put both arms around her; and when I saw that they were going to kiss I shut my eyes right tight and stopped up my ears and buried my face in the pile of moss. Even then I never felt so much like a yellow dog in my life!

CHAPTER II

You hear a heap of talking these days about "the divine mission of woman," especially from long-haired preachers that don't believe in ladies voting; and another heap of talk about the "rights" of women from the ladies themselves.

There was so much of it going on last winter when I was at Rufe's that I told some of it to Mammy Lou when I came home. She says it's every speck a question of dish-washing when you sift it down to the bottom. The women are tired of their job and the men are too proud to do it unless the window shades are pulled down.

I don't blame the men for being proud. They have something to be proud of, for they can do exactly as they please, from wearing out the seats of their trousers when they're little to being president when they're big. When I was right little I used to think that the heathen over the sea that threw the girl babies to the crocodiles were doing it in hopes of killing out the girl breed, so the little new babies would have to be boys. A heathen is anybody that lives on the other side of the map from us.

Another good thing about a man is he can say, "Damn that telephone!" Rufe says it whenever he's busy and it bothers him, but Cousin Eunice can't. All she can do is to have sick headache when she gets worn out.

I know one tired lady whose husband is a busy doctor and whose baby is a busy baby, and lots of times the lady has to stop up her ears to say her prayers. And she hardly ever has time to powder her face unless company is coming, but, sick or well, she has to answer that telephone! She says it is a disheartening thing to have to take her hands out of the biscuit dough when the cook's brother has died and go to the telephone in a big hurry where folks tell her every symptom of everything they have, from abscess on the brain to ingrowing toe-nails. And she never gets the baby well lathered in his bath of a morning but what some of her lady friends call her up and she has to sit and talk for politeness' sake till the baby almost drowns and gets soap in his eyes.

She tries to believe in New Thought though, and some days she "goes into the silence." This means wrapping the telephone up in a counterpane and stuffing up the door-bell until it can make only a hoarse, choking noise. Then she spanks the baby and puts him to bed, and that house is like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.

Yes, women certainly seem to have a hard time in this life. Even when they marry rich and live in a hotel and never have any babies they seem to be worse tired than the ones that warm bottles of milk and peel potatoes. Some of them that Cousin Eunice knows are called "bridge maniacs," and they shrug their shoulders and say "What's the use?" if you suggest anything to them.

I have been home from Cousin Eunice's now for two weeks, for the stylish, private school I went to up there lets out soon. Mammy Lou says I'm the worst person to break out in spots she ever saw, and one of my "spots" last summer was keeping this diary, which I did for a while very hard and fast. Now a whole year has passed and it is summer again and I am so lonesome that I believe I'll write a little every day and tell some of the things we did at Rufe's last winter. If any of you grandchildren who read are afflicted with that trouble of doing things by fits and starts you may know who you inherited it from. I'm not really to blame so much for neglecting you, my diary, for all the time I needed you most last winter you were lost. This is a terrible habit that all my things have—getting lost. My garters do it especially and I have to tear great holes in my stockings by pinning them up and then forgetting to stand stiff-kneed.

Rufe told mother last fall that I was so precocious, which I looked up in the dictionary and admired him very much for, that I ought to be where I could have good teachers. So after he and Cousin Eunice had been married long enough to be able to bear the sight of a third party at the breakfast table they wrote for me to come and I went.

I was kinder disappointed to see them looking like every-day folks again, for the last time I had seen them they were looking as they had never looked before and never will look again, for Rufe says he'll be hanged if anybody can get him to appear in that wedding suit any more.

But oh, that wedding! And oh, that wedding march played on a thundering pipe-organ that makes cold chills run up and down your back thinking what if it was happening to you! When the time comes for "I will" you nearly smother, you're so afraid they might change their minds at the last minute and embarrass you half to death right there before all those people.

They didn't change their minds then, though, nor since then either, I honestly believe. They married safe and sound, and Cousin Eunice's favorite book now is 1,001 Tried Recipes. And Keats is lots of times covered with dust.

I got this far last night when Mammy Lou passed by my window on her way to her house from the kitchen and stopped long enough to make me go to bed. She says it takes a sight of sleep and a "passel o' victuals" for a girl of my age, and I don't have enough of either.

"I'se shore goin' 'er tell Mis' Mary how you set up uv a night," she said, very fiercely, but she couldn't shake her finger at me for it took both hands to hold the big pan she had under her apron. "An' as fer eatin'! Why, a red bug eats more! An' such truck! Candy and apples and fried chicken and fried Saratoga chips! Fries nuvver was no good for nobody at the gawky age, nohow. It takes boils to fatten them!"

I promised I'd go on to bed and eat nothing but "boils" to please her if she wouldn't tell father and mother how late I sit up, so she promised. She never would tell anyhow.

I believe the next thing I wanted to mention about was the theaters they used to take me to on Friday night when there wasn't any lessons. I just love the theater. I believe if I don't decide to be a trained nurse, although I am sure that is what I was cut out for, I may be an actress. When they used to tell me pitiful tales at Sunday-school about the heathen I was sure I wanted to be a missionary to Japan. Mother used to take me to a tea store with her every time we went into the city to buy things we couldn't get at home and the walls were covered with pictures of Japan. I never will forget how blue the sky was nor how white the clouds, and it seemed the loveliest country in the world to me, except home. And I would look at mother and wonder how she would feel if I told her that some day I was going to leave her and father and sail away to that beautiful land where the poor, ignorant people didn't know how to wear corsets nor eat hog meat. Of course they needed somebody to tell them what they were missing and I was eager to be that one!

That was a long time ago! I know more about Japan now! I know more about America too! Doctor Gordon said one night last winter that if some of the missionaries were to go all over this country and tell folks to open their windows and stop murdering their babies with candy and bananas they would do more good than trying to teach the Japanese so much. He said he didn't know which was the more heathenish, to throw children in the river and let them have a quick death or stuff them on fried meat and pickles and let them die by slow torture.

The mothers are hard to teach, he says, because they don't more than leave the doctor's office with a poor little pale baby than they meet an old woman who tells them not to let the child be doctored to death, to "feed 'im." They will tell the mother "Didn't I have eleven? And everything I et, they et!"

He told us so many stories of murdered babies that I got to feeling like I'd prefer being a nurse in a day home. I love babies! And Doctor Gordon has the loveliest eyes!—But I haven't got to him yet.

Speaking of the theater, I got to see many notorious people on the stage this winter. Rufe said I would get a great variety of ideas from the best plays. I did. I got a great variety of Ideals too. One time he would be tall, fair and brave, with a Scotch name, like Marmaduke Cameron, or Bruce MacPherson. Then the very next time I'd go he'd change his looks and disposition.

I loved some of the operas, too, especially Il Trovatore. I wish the singers were slender, though. It hurts your feelings to have the "voice that rang from that donjon tower" belonging to a great fat man with no head to speak of, and what he has consisting mainly of jaws. Of all the songs on record (not phonographic record) next to Dixie and La Paloma I believe I love Ah, I have sighed to rest me! The words to this are not so loving, but the tune is so pitiful.

I wish my name was Dolores Lovelock, or Anita Messala, and I could get shut up in a tower. I have a girl friend in the city and every time we write to each other we sign the name we're wishing most was ours at that very minute. Her last letter was signed "Undine Valentine," but I don't think that's half as pretty as Mercedes Ficediola.

It wouldn't hardly be worth while for me to change my name now, because I change my mind so often. I'm a great hand to start a thing and then branch off and start something entirely different, such as learning how to make the table walk, and pyrography. Cousin Eunice said one day when she looked around at the things I had in my room that it reminded her of Pompeii when they dug it up—so many things started that never would be finished.

One of the things we enjoyed most at Cousin Eunice's was walking out to a lovely old cemetery not very far from her house. It is so old and so beautiful that you're sure all the people in the graves must have gone to Heaven long ago. Along in April, when the iris and lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom and the birds and trees and sky all seem to be so happy, you look around at those peaceful graves and you don't believe in hell one bit. You think God is a heap better than folks give Him credit for being. But I hope this will never come to Brother Sheffield's ears, for he thinks you're certainly going there if you don't believe in a hell worse than the Standard Oil Company on fire.

While I'm on this kind of subject I want to tell something that Rufe said last winter, but I'm afraid to, for if mother ever saw it she would get Brother Sheffield to hold a special meeting for Rufe. I might risk it and then lock my diary up tight. Rufe said one time when I remarked that I liked St. John better than St. Paul: "No wonder! St. John's liver was in good working order!"

Cousin Eunice and Rufe are still very earnest and study deep things, even if they don't read Keats so much. They know a jolly crowd of people that call themselves "Bohemians." Lots of nights some of them would come to Cousin Eunice's and we would cook things in the chafing-dish and "discuss the deeper problems of life." They are not real Bohemians though, for, from what they said, I learned that a real Bohemian is a person that is very clever, but nobody knows it. He "follows his career," eating out of paper sacks and tin cans and sleeping on an article that is an oriental couch in the daytime. Then finally some rich person finds him and invites him to dinner, and this is called "discovering a genius."

When our friends would come we would talk about the "Brotherhood of Man" and the North Pole and such things as that. I listen to everything I can hear about the North Pole for I never have got over the idea that Santa Claus lives there. And the "Brotherhood of Man" means we're all as much alike as biscuits in a pan, the only difference being in the place where we're put; and we ought to act accordingly.

Some of the young ones talk a great deal about how the children of the nation ought to be brought up, and they tell about what their family life is going to be like, though Rufe says most of them haven't got salary enough to support a cockroach.

I think the "Brotherhood of Man" business is a good thing to teach children, for I wasn't taught it and I shall never forget my feelings when I first learned that Christ was a Jew! I thought it couldn't be so, and if it was so I could never be happy again. So the Bohemians are going to teach their children that the Jew is our brother and that he hath eyes and if you prick him he will bleed. These are their own words. I'm sure the Jews are lovely people since I've seen Ben-Hur on the stage and the picture of Dis—Disraeli. That's all I know about him and I'm not sure how to spell that. I'll skin my children if I ever catch them saying "Sheenie" in my presence.

And we make limericks! We don't make them in the chafing-dish though, as I thought when I first went there. A limerick is a very different thing from what you'd think if you didn't know. It's a verse of poetry that's very clever in every line.

Among the Bohemians I liked best were a married couple and Ann Lisbeth. Besides having the same name as mine, Ann Lisbeth is a beautiful foreign girl who was living across the ocean when she was born. Her last name is something that Disraeli is not a circumstance to, and I'd never spell it, so I won't waste time trying. She's going to get rid of that name pretty soon and I don't blame her, although Cousin Eunice says it is a noble one across the ocean. Still I don't blame her, for the man is a young doctor, Doctor Gordon that I've already mentioned, and perfectly precious. Next to a prince I believe a young doctor is the most thrilling thing in the world!

Ann Lisbeth lived near Cousin Eunice and they were great friends. She and her mother were very poor because they got exiled from their home for trying to get Ann Lisbeth's father out of prison where the king had put him. Oh, the people across the ocean are so much more romantic than we are in this country! Now, father wouldn't ever get put in prison in a lifetime!

Ann Lisbeth has to work for a living. She does embroidery—exquisite embroidery, and lace work that looks like charlotte russe. She is the kind of looking girl that you'd expect to have a dressing-table covered with silver things and eat marshmallows and ice-cream all the time. She is what Cousin Eunice calls a "lotus-eater." This like to have worried me to death at first, for I misunderstood it and imagined it was something like eating roaches. I wasn't going to blame Ann Lisbeth for it even if it was like roaches, for I thought maybe it was the style in her country across the ocean. What is one nation's style would turn another's stomach; and everybody likes what he was raised on, even Chinese rats and Limburger cheese.

It was very romantic the way Ann Lisbeth met Doctor Gordon. She had gone down to the florist's one slippery day to spend her last quarter for white hyacinths to cheer her mother up when she had the good fortune to slip down and break her arm. Doctor Gordon happened to be passing at the time in his automobile and he carried her to the hospital and fixed the arm. He said white hyacinths were his favorite flower, too, so he sends them to her and her mother every day.

Poor Doctor Gordon! He's having a hard time to make a living like every other young doctor. He says sometimes he has a whole month of blue Mondays come right together. And he says every time he happens to wake up with a headache he also has a blowout in his best tire and gets a notice from the bank that he's overdrawn the same day.

I liked him extremely well myself for a while, and he seemed to like me. He called me his little sweetheart, but I soon saw that a little sweetheart has to take a big back seat when there's a grown one around.

Mother and I have been laughing all day about a little affair that happened here last winter while I was away at school.

After Christmas mother and father went back to stay at Rufe's with me a few days, for they said the place was so lonesome when I left they couldn't stand it. Of course they met Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth, for we were always at each other's house, either to learn a Mount Mellick stitch or to play a piece from a new opera. Mother liked Ann Lisbeth's sweet ways so much that she said she just must come down and make her a visit before she thought of getting married.

About the time for the first jonquils to bloom, early in February, mother wrote that they reminded her so much of me and made her so lonesome, that she wished Ann Lisbeth would come on then. So she packed her suit-case and went.

Everybody knows how the people in a little place will look at a stranger that comes in, because they're so tired of looking at each other. So they stared at her from the station clear up to the house. Now, city people never get any enjoyment out of staring unless they see somebody in trouble, such as an unfortunate young man with his shoulder to the wheel, trying to repair a puncture, by the side of a muddy road. Then they stare, and giggle too.

There were several young men at the station that day, and, as Ann Lisbeth went down there not breathing to a soul that she was engaged, they came near losing their minds over her beautiful skin and foreign accent.

The one of them that seemed to be most impressed was a bore—no, he wasn't just an every-day kind of bore that asks you if this is your first visit to that place and tells you afterward that he never has been so impressed in his life on short acquaintance. I've heard Cousin Eunice talk about them, but this man wasn't like that sort of bore. He was a perfect auger. Many a time when he has dropped in to see father of an evening and I would have to put my book down for politeness' sake, I've sat there and pinched my face, the side that was turned away from him, till it was black and blue, to keep awake. Pinching your arm or leg wouldn't have done any good with this man—you had to pinch up close to your brain.

All the time Ann Lisbeth was there he showed so plainly that he was coming to see her that mother and father would go out and leave them alone, though father said he felt so sorry for her that he promised always to do something to run him off by ten o'clock. Every man knows how to do these things, I believe, such as taking off his shoes loud and telling mother to wind the clock, in a stagey voice, and making a great racket around the front door. And when the young man would hear these signs he would leave.

Right in the midst of Ann Lisbeth's visit one day she got a telegram from Doctor Gordon saying that he was coming down that evening and leave on the midnight train. This is a sure sign a man cares. He couldn't stand it any longer. Well this Mr. W. (I'll call him that for fear his grandchildren might feel hard toward mine if it ever got to their ears that I had spelt his name right out) had said he was coming over that night to bring some new records for the talking machine, to try them; but, when Ann Lisbeth told mother about Doctor Gordon coming, mother telephoned him, Mr. W., I mean, not to come till the next night when father would be at home, as he wanted to hear the records.

Sure enough father did have some business out in the country that afternoon and didn't get home until about ten o'clock that night. He heard voices as he passed the parlor door, and thinking of course it was Mr. W., decided that he would run him off right away so poor Ann Lisbeth could get some sleep.

Mother was already asleep and there was no way for him to know who it really was in the parlor, so he took his shoes off and slammed them down in vain, and rattled out the ashes, and wound the clock, and coughed and sneezed. By this time he was awfully sleepy, for it was a cold night and he had had a long drive, so he went to bed and to sleep.

Along about twelve o'clock father woke up, and seeing a light still in the parlor, tried to get mother roused up long enough to ask her what else she supposed he might use besides dynamite to run that fellow off. Mother was still so sleepy that she didn't say anything, so father got out of bed and opened his bedroom door. There were voices talking very easy in the parlor, so father, thinking that surely Ann Lisbeth would be ready to commit suicide by this time, decided he would walk to the front door and open and shut it real loud, knowing that would run him off, without waiting to slip on his trousers.

Now, father is long and lank, and wears old-timey bob-tail night-shirts, winter and summer; and all the rooms of our house open square into that one big hall—and there are no curtains to hide behind!

Just as father reached the front door and began tampering with the lock, out walked the happy pair from the parlor and they must have had a mighty tumble off of Mount Olympus or Pegasus, or whatever that place is called. They jumped back as quickly as they could, but of course they couldn't get back quickly enough to suit all parties concerned.

Father finally got the door open and, to keep from having to pass the parlor door again, he ran clear around that big, rambling house, bare-footed, and with the February moon shining down on him and the February wind whistling through his little bob-tail night-shirt.

The noise of so many doors opening and shutting made mother wake up in a hurry, and, being used to father's ways of leaping, then looking afterward, she realized what had happened.

Poor father came around to the side porch and scratched on the bedroom door for mother to let him in. By this time she was so near dead from laughing that she could hardly speak, but managed to use her voice a little, just to pay him back for doing such an idiotic thing, she said.

She opened the bedroom door a little, so Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth could hear, then called out in a loud, distressed voice:

"Oh, Dan! Have you come home in that condition again?"

Everybody that knows father knows that he never drank a drop of anything stronger than soothing-syrup in his life; and when he had met Doctor Gordon in the city they hadn't been able to get off the subject of prohibition, they both were so temperate. It was a terrible thing to be called "in that condition" before him!

But mother let him in, and Doctor Gordon caught his train back to the city where he sent father at least two dozen funny post-cards on the subject of "that condition."

CHAPTER III

I always did admire surprises, my diary, so when mother came in from the station one day not long ago and said there was a surprise for me I thought sure it must be a dessert for dinner, or a package come by express, as it isn't Christmas for anything to be in the toe of my stocking. But mother shook her head and smiled at all of these. She said it was a heap better, and it is.

A curious thing has happened in this family. It's happened a little to father, for he's kept awake by it; a good deal to mother, for she has to tell how to tend to it; an awful lot to Dilsey, for she has to walk it and feed it and get it to sleep; but it has happened most of all to Bertha, for it's to her that the stork (or the doctor, or out of the rose bush—they tell you so many different tales you never know which to believe) brought it. Just about that time Bertha happened not to be feeling very well, so mother wrote for her to come down to our house where the air would be good for her, and then she would have Dilsey to tend to it. You'd never guess what it is, my diary, so I'll tell you. It's a baby! A live one with open and shut eyes, and can cry; you don't have to pull a string to make it, either. This makes it better than even the finest doll, and, as I'm above dolls anyhow, a baby is more suitable to one of my age. The only bad part about it is that you can't lock it up in the wardrobe when you get through playing with it. Sometimes I have wished it was the kind you had to pull a string to make cry, and then I'd cut the string off so we would have a few peaceful nights, but apt as not this wouldn't be healthy for it, for I guess the stork (or the doctor, or out of the rose bush) knew best how to fix it.

Mr. Parkes is the baby's father, and also Bertha's husband. He is one of the nicest men you ever saw, pleasant all the time, which people say is because he's a drummer which sells things. He carries valises full of lovely crackers and little cakes with icing on the top, and calls it his "line." I've heard Rufe and Cousin Eunice talk about "lines falling in pleasant places," and I think it must mean something like this, for our house has been a pleasant place since Saturday night when he came to spend Sunday with us and Bertha. Some days he sells as much as five hundred dollars worth of cake to one man, though I don't see what keeps him from dying that bought them of stomach ache, for I've had it myself since he's been here considerable. He and father talk a heap about Mr. Parkes' "house" in the city. He writes to the house every day and it writes back to him, and he is always saying what he'll do "when he hears from the house," just like it was folks.

He wears an elk's head on the lapel of his coat for an ornament and another on his watch chain, and even has a pair of purple socks with white elks on them, and laughs a good deal, which has been a benefit to Bertha's disposition since she married him. If the baby wakes up and cries for her bottle as late as eleven o'clock at night, which would give most men room to say things, he's just as jolly as if it was broad daylight, and says so loud you can hear him in the next room: "Tonsound her little skin! Her is her daddy's own kid—her knows that eleven o'clock calls for a bottle, only daddy wants his cold, and her wants hers warmed!" And out to the kitchen he goes and warms it like a gentleman. I believe Mr. Parkes would be a gentleman even if he had twins.

Of course there never is any good happens to your family without something bad happening along with it. A misfortune was sent to us one morning when the train came. It was Aunt Laura, mother's sister, and Bertha's and my aunt. It is a habit of hers to come to our house every summer, but this time she came before we were looking for her, having got mad at the relatives where she was. So she has changed her will and is going to leave all her money to Bertha's baby, and she told mother that she came right on down as soon as she decided on this to see if the baby was a nice, well-behaved child, as it didn't run in the family for the children to be any too well-behaved; and she looked at me when she said the last. Bertha was in a flutter when she heard it, but mother just laughed and said the baby was equally as well-behaved as most eight-weeks-old children.

Aunt Laura has spit-curls, but a great deal of money, having been a school teacher ever since she was born, and never spending her money buying her little nieces candy and pretty dresses. She admires church and preachers more than anything, but I don't, and when the money was willed to me one time I lost my chance by saying at the table when Brother Sheffield was there eating chicken and said he liked the gizzard, right quick, before I thought of manners, "Father, don't give it to him—he ain't little!" The money has been willed to every member of the family, for she gets mad at one and unwills it away from them onto another, until we've all had a trial.

But the poetry books say it's a black cloud that don't blow somebody a silver lining, and I guess the silver lining to Aunt Laura is that she's in love with Brother Sheffield, which will give me a good many new thoughts to write about; for before when I was writing about couples it was always the man that was trying to marry the lady, but now it's the other way, which you can always count on when you see spit-curls. Even this is better to write about than just a baby, though, for they mostly do the same thing day after day; but you can never tell what a loving person will do to thrill your diary.

It was till plumb breakfast time this morning before Aunt Laura made known to us what new thing she's got up to talk about all the time. Father calls it a "fad." He said the minute he saw her come he was willing to bet on anything, from the latest breakfast food to an Aunty Saloon League, but mother told him it was sinful to bet about such things, for last summer it was foreign missions. It is just as well that he didn't bet, for he would have lost, it being the heart disease which she has very bad. She said she didn't tell us right at first because she knew we didn't care anything about hearing it, but she thought we better be prepared in case a spell came on her suddenly, for she had felt worse symptoms lately than ever before. Bertha had acted awful good all day and not let the baby cry nor slobber on Aunt Laura for the sake of the will.

I guess I've been worse this last week than ever before, for it is the first time I've been ashamed to tell what I've done in my diary. Bertha knows if Aunt Laura could get Brother Sheffield to marry her she would unwill the money from the baby; so she thinks up things to tell me to do to keep them from being together, and I've been doing them. One time I hid her purple Sunday bonnet, then her curls to keep her from going to prayer-meeting, but I'm glad to say that I have never taken the dimes which Bertha said she would give me for doing them. I hate Aunt Laura enough to do mean things to her myself, which is a better principle than to do them just for dimes.

This is Sunday again and I have to go to church. Somehow, during the summer, Sunday smells like black silk, for mother and all the ladies that can afford it wear it to church to let the others see how well off they are. When I was right little and got tee-ninsy cards at Sunday-school I imagined Heaven looked like those cards, all lilies-of-the-valley and little pink lambs, but since I've grown older my views have changed. Preachers always think you can't go to Heaven unless you do just like they do, and I couldn't be like a preacher to save my life, except about chicken.

Aunt Laura had to look all over the place for her black silk waist this morning and then not find it, so she got into a bad spell and couldn't go to church. After the sermon was over and we were trying to forget it by standing around and telling the other ladies how much fruit we had put up this past week, Brother Sheffield came up and asked mother if Aunt Laura was sick, not being out to services. Mother said she was, but she hoped to find her all right when we got home, as she never was sick very long, and I knew she would be well because it was ice-cream for dinner. He said then he'd be over to see her this afternoon as he hadn't seen her in so long.

Well, it was awfully hot all the afternoon, and, as he wouldn't be over till late so as to be invited to supper, Aunt Laura decided to take off her front hair and have a nap after dinner. Now, up to this time I have been afraid to mention even in my diary about Bertha's bad habit. I really like Bertha better than I did before she was married, and I knew if Aunt Laura was to catch on to it she would change from the baby right away, for Brother Sheffield calls it "the trade-mark of Jezebel," which is a Bible lady, though the preachers always throw her up to anybody they don't like. So Bertha keeps this locked away good in the little left-handed drawer of her bureau, and don't anybody but me know it's there.

It was getting late when brother Sheffield drove up to the gate. He is an old man and his knees are so poor that they look like they would punch through his trousers legs if he was to get down on them to ask a lady to marry him, as they do in books. In fact, I have stayed around the parlor and watched considerable, thinking how mortified I'd feel if they were to punch through, but he hasn't ever got down on them yet. His name is Gideon, which makes it worse for him, too. Cousin Eunice said Ann Lisbeth's name is a very old one in the country across the ocean where she used to live, but I know there ain't an older name on earth than Gideon. Aunt Laura ought to have been named the feminine of it, instead of that beautiful name that has so much lovely poetry written about it.

Anyhow, I was surprised that she wasn't dressed up in a clean waist and down on the front porch to meet him, but I went up-stairs right quick to tell her he was there. She was still asleep and woke up as mad and red as folks always do that go to sleep in the summer. I told her he was already on the porch.

"Well, help me get dressed, won't you, instead of standing there staring at me as if you never saw anybody with their front hair off and their upper plate out before? Run to the well and bring me some fresh water, and, say, come back by your mother's room and bring me her box of powder and puff. I spilt all of mine looking in the drawer this morning for that pestiferous waist. Hurry!"

I ran to the well and got the water, but coming back by mother's room I saw that Brother Sheffield was facing the door and would have seen me, which wouldn't have been nice to bring out a box and puff before a man, much less a preacher, so I didn't get the powder. I told Aunt Laura to get Bertha's, when she commenced fussing, for I had passed her room and saw that she had dressed in a big hurry and left the bureau unlocked, the room being very hot and dark, the baby being asleep, on account of the flies. She hushed then and said for me to go down and tell him that she would be out in a few minutes, which I did. I left him on the porch fanning while I went out to a little place I have under the porch where it is nice and quiet and they can't find you reading fairy tales when they want you for something; but you can hear them talking.

Pretty soon Aunt Laura came out, and in her dressed-up voice commenced telling him how sorry she was that she kept him waiting. But before she had more than got it said he asked her excited-like what was the matter with her. It seemed like when he got excited she did too, so she grabbed her stomach (not that I saw her, but I know she always does it here lately when she gets mad or scared) and said:

"Oh, my heart! It must be the heart disease!"

He interrupted her again, a heap too quick and sharp for a preacher:

"Your heart nothing! Go and look at your face!"

That was more than I could stand, so out from under the porch I slid, just in time to see Aunt Laura, with her face as red as the Indians they have in sideshows, turn and run into the hall where she could look at herself in the hat-rack looking-glass. She gave one tremendous yell which woke the baby and made the rest of the family come flying in from where they were. It wasn't a minute before me and Brother Sheffield were in the hall with her and mother and father running in off of the back porch, and Dilsey with the baby in her arms leaning over the banisters to see what was the matter.

"It's my death stroke," Aunt Laura said, just like she knew what she was talking about. "The doctor's books say it comes on this way," she kept on, while the preacher fanned her and we were all flying around doing things for her, and me standing still wondering how on earth come her face so fiery red. "Thank Heaven, I die in the conviction of having lived a good life, and willed all my money to the only member of my family that has ever treated me with any respect." This did look kinder like the truth, for the baby was the only member of the family which was crying over this sad occasion; but she was very loud and hard.

"I've been visited by Providence with a curious family," poor Aunt Laura said, looking very mad toward father and mother, "but they will soon have cause to regret all their strange ways with me. If there was one person in this world that did care for me, to that one should my will be changed, for there is little consolation in leaving your property to a baby."

Brother Sheffield here spoke up and said as Aunt Laura "so fully realized her hopeless condition he thought they better have some conversation together as to her spiritual welfare. He desired a few moments alone with her."

"Yes," said Aunt Laura right quick, "private conversation. My soul's safety is not to be discussed in the presence of my enemies!"

So out we all got, me along with the rest of them, which was a great disappointment, for I could have learned a good deal if there had been any way of staying in there. They talked a long time and we could hear a few remarks now and then, being as we couldn't think of anything to say ourselves, and it was very still on the porch. Once or twice we heard her say very decided-like that indeed she wasn't mistaken, for every book she had read on the subject said it was exactly that kind of a symptom. And then he would talk some, and one time he seemed to doubt her word so that she fairly yelled out, the way she does when he ain't around: "Can you doubt the hideous mark of death that has this hour appeared upon my face? Isn't it proof that my flesh is being prepared for the worms?" which did sound pitiful and scary, too, it being kinder dark on the porch. This seemed to do the work, for in a few minutes she called us in and told us that Brother Sheffield had asked her to marry him, and although she had never before considered him in the light of a lover, still she was going to do it if the Lord let her live an hour, while father could ride over for a preacher and she could change her will. Brother Sheffield was crying like he does when he is calling mourners, and his voice would hardly talk, but he managed to say:

"Yes, she has done me the honor to accept me; she, a woman of intellect and wealth, and me, only a poor, humble worker——" He couldn't get any further, but I had heard it so many times before that I knew it was "humble worker of the vineyard," though father says he is more of a hungry eater of the barnyard.

When Aunt Laura mentioned about being married in an hour Brother Sheffield seemed to take a second thought, and spoke up kinder weak and said he didn't know whether it was exactly right to be married on Sunday or not. When Aunt Laura saw him begin to weaken it brought on such a hard spell that she laid back on the sofa with her eyes shut, like she was sure enough dead. This really scared mother, and she told Mammy Lou, who had her head poked in at the back door, to run for some water. Mammy brought the bucket in off the back porch and commenced sousing it over Aunt Laura by the handsful, which didn't bring her to; but a strange thing happened, which, if it wasn't me that saw it, anybody would think it was a story, but I cross my heart that the water that dribbled down off her face on to her clean waist was pink!

"Jumping Jerusalem!" father said, "the heart disease is washing off!" This made Aunt Laura open her eyes, and by that time Mammy Lou had got a towel and was wiping her face off all over, which seemed to make it look natural again. Not one of us knew what to think of such a strange disease till all of a sudden I remembered Bertha's bad habit! And then I knew it was all off with Aunt Laura and the marrying. It wasn't very long till they all caught on to what it was on her face; and the worst part of it was that Brother Sheffield said he believed she did it a-purpose. He rose up very proud, and looking kinder relieved and said he could never marry a woman who would "defile herself with the trade-mark of Jezebel."

When he commenced throwing up Jezebel to Aunt Laura she threw up Esau to him, which sold himself for a "mess of pottage," though this never did sound lady-like to me, even coming from the pulpit. So Esau went out and drove straight home, and Jezebel went up-stairs and packed her trunk to go home early in the morning, never having been so insulted by relatives before in her life.

So the marrying is off and the baby is disinherited, which will be a relief to it when it gets big enough to understand. But the worst part is that Aunt Laura blames the whole thing on me, for she says I had her ruination in mind when I sicked her on to that little left-handed drawer. Of course it ain't so, but it proves that people ought to raise the blind and be sure it's whitening they're spreading on, even if the baby is asleep.

CHAPTER IV

You remember, my diary, a good many pages back I mentioned in here a pair of Bohemians that were married to each other and were friends of ours and would come to Rufe's every week and we would all do funny things? Well, I couldn't write about them then, for I didn't have any space for married people, wanting to save it purely for folks that loved each other. But now it does seem like Providence that they've come down here to spend the summer in the country, for there's not a single loving soul left to write about, Aunt Laura being gone and Brother Sheffield never very loving when she was here, except chicken.

Their name is Mrs. Marie and Augustus Young. Father says that Adam or the legislature knew a thing or two when it named them Young. He is a professor and owns a chair in a college that must either have gold nails in it or sit extra good, for Rufe says it is worth five thousand dollars a year. Mrs. Young sings vocal. I wish she didn't, especially in a parlor. If anybody is singing or reciting a speech on a platform and flowers and electric lights it thrills you and you really enjoy it; but if they do it in a close room, especially if it trills high or has to kneel down and get red in the face, it makes you so ashamed for the one that's doing it, and for yourself, too, that you look straight at the carpet. Even then the blood rushes to your head.

They have built a house with such a wide porch running all around it that it reminds you of a little, tiny boy with a great big hat pulled down over his eyes, which is called a bungalow. They said they had brought a "complete outfit for light housekeeping" along with them, but when mother saw it she laughed considerable on the outside of the bungalow, for it was fifty-three books, mostly ending in "ology," a hammock and some chairs that lean away back, a guitar apiece, a great many little glass cases that you stick bugs and butterflies in if you can catch them, a picture of the Apostle Hosea, with his head all wrapped up like an old lady with the neuralgia, which they both said they could not live without, and a punching-bag, which they punched a great deal in the city, not having any baby to amuse themselves with, which was a good thing for the baby I reckon. So mother sent them over a great many things and Professor Young said she was the most sensible woman he ever saw, including a biscuit board and a sifter. They have been here a few days now and are delighted with the country air and the green scenery, and, although it does seem proud to say it, me. They thought very highly of me at Cousin Eunice's and said I was the most "interesting revelation of artless juvenile expression" they ever saw, which I wrote down on paper and when I came home taught it to Mammy Lou to give in at the experience meeting.

One morning early, while mammy was beating the biscuit for breakfast, and I was up in the pear tree right by the kitchen door I nearly fell out with surprise when I saw Professor Young coming around the house with a pretty shirt open at the neck that he admires and two great big dominecker roosters up in his arms which were both squawking very loud. Mammy Lou came to the door to see what all the noise was about, and he said she was the very person he wanted to see.

"Auntie," he commenced, trying to get into his pocket and wipe his face with his handkerchief, which was greatly perspiring, but he couldn't do it for the roosters, "my wife and I are in a quandary. We are both ignorant of the preferred method of inflicting a painless yet instantaneous death upon a fowl."

Mammy's eyes began to shine, for she loves big words like she loves watermelons, and without a sign of manners she never even tried to answer his question, but looked up at me in the tree and says:

"Baby, kin you rickollect all that to write it down?"

Professor Young then looked up into the tree too and says: "Why, Mistress Ann, how entirely characteristic!" And then he wanted to know what book I was reading and I told him, John Halifax, Gentleman, which I have had for my favorite book since I was eleven years old; and the roosters continued to squawk. I got down then and asked Professor Young if he wouldn't come into the house, but he said no and asked his question to mammy over again. She looked at me and to save her manners I told her right quick what the meaning of it was, me understanding it on account of being precocious and also at Rufe's last winter, where they use strange words.

"Thar now! Is that all it's about?" she asked awfully disappointed, for she thought from the words "painless death" it must be something about preaching. Then in a minute, when she saw that he was still waiting, she turned around to him and said: "Whar is the chicken at that you want killed?"

He held the roosters away from him and, looking at them as proud as a little boy looks at a bucket of minnows, he said:

"These are they!"

This tickled mammy so, and me too, though I remembered my manners, that she began to laugh, which shook considerable under her apron, and said:

"Well, gentlemen! Whut do you want to kill them for?"

"For breakfast," he said; and, noticing her laughing, his face got to looking so pitiful all in a minute that it made me just wish that Cinderella's fairy godmother would come along and turn those roosters into nice little pullets all fried and laying on parsley.

"Why, Mr. Professor," mammy told him, "them roosters is so old that they will soon die a natural death if you leave them alone; and they're so big that you might fry 'em frum now till breakfast time on Jedgment Day, and then they wouldn't be fitten!"

When she told him this he did manage to get out his handkerchief, I thought maybe to cry on, he looked so disappointed, but it was just to perspire on.

"I—er, observed that they were unduly large," the poor man told her, "but I—er, thought maybe the larger a country thing was the better!"

I thought of horse-flies and ticks, but was too mannerly to mention them, especially so near breakfast time. Just then mother and father came out of the back door, and when they heard the tale of the roosters they both invited him to come right in and have breakfast with us, and said they would tie their legs together so they could flop around the back yard, but couldn't get away, and I could run over and bring Mrs. Young.

Last night when I got home I was too tired to write or anything else, for it was the night of the glorious Fourth! Professor Young and Mrs. Young both kept remarking all day how lovely it was to be able to spend the Fourth of July in a cool ravine instead of in the horrid city where there were so many smells of gunpowder and little boys. They said they must have me go along for the woods wouldn't really be woodsy without me, as I was the genius loci. I didn't know at first what that was, but I know now that it makes you tired and perspiry to be the genius loci of eight miles of woods on the Fourth of July. Rufe and Cousin Eunice couldn't think of half as many peculiar things to do when they were courting as the Youngs.

We ate a number of stuffed eggs which kinder made up for the tiredness, me being very fond of them, but Professor Young is crazy about Mrs. Young's singing voice and every time we'd come to an extra pretty place he would say: "Marie, my love, sing something just here," so we'd have to stand still on our legs, it often being too snaky to sit down, while she sang. One time she thought up part of a song without a speck of tune to it, and it was in a language across the ocean. All I could make out was "Parsifal," and every once in a while she would stop a minute in the song and say a word that sounded like "Itch," though I don't suppose it was, being in a song. Every time she would say itch he would scratch, for the poor man was covered with ticks.

But the most trying thing was the bugs and butterflies, which being "naturalists" they caught. We had to run all over the ground and sides of the hills for them, and empty our dinner out on a nice, shady rock, so we could use the lunch box to put them in. When we got back we found it all covered with ants, but we were so hungry we thought we'd brushed them all off, though in the cake we found we hadn't. If a person hasn't ever eaten an ant, my diary, there ain't any use in trying to make them understand what they taste like, so I won't dwell on that. Professor Young said though he was willing to eat them for the sake of his beloved science, though I don't see how it helped science any.

Toward evening we got to a fine place in the branch to wade and Mrs. Young said, oh, let's do it; it would remind us of our childhood days. So we soon had our feet bare, with our thoughts on our childhood days, and never once stopping to remember that we didn't have a thing to wipe them on. Nobody said so much as towel until we got out, and then it was too late, so we were very much pained and annoyed every step of the way home on account of our gritty feet.

Another morning early we decided to go out and see the sun rise, like Thoreau. (They tell me how to spell all the odd words.) We went up to the tiptop of a high hill, and when the sun was just high enough to make you squint your eyes Mr. Young remarked that he realized his life was "replete with glorious possibilities," and he said in such moments he felt that he could "encompass his heart's desire." He said he fain would be a novelist. Now, this is the only subject they ever fall out about, for he's always wanting to be something that he is not. Last winter when he met Doctor Gordon at Rufe's he decided he wanted to be a doctor, for he said they could always make a living, no matter where they were, while a poor college professor had to stay wherever he had a chair to sit in. So he went to a store where you buy rubber arms and legs and things and bought a long black bag like Doctor Gordon's, full of shiny, scary-looking scissors and knives which cost seventy-five dollars, to lay away till fall when the doctor's school opened up again. In two weeks Mrs. Young had got the store man to take the things back for half price because Professor Young had decided he wanted to study banjo playing instead of doctoring and had bought a banjo trimmed with silver.

She knew whenever he said he wanted to be anything it would cost as much as two new dresses, and then have to be exchanged for something else, so she asked him if he would have to buy anything to begin this novel-writing business with. He proudly told her no, for his "Mother Nature had endowed him with a complete equipment," and he thumped his forehead between his eyes and his straw hat. Then she told him to go on. He said it would be a good time to get material from the study of the "primitive creatures" around here in the country.

I hoped these "primitive creatures" were not the kind of insects you would have to empty the lunch box for, nor be careful not to pull off their hind legs while you were catching them, not knowing just what they were.

I was scared good when he said he thought the girl that milked Mrs. Hedges' cows would be a good one to begin on. He said if Marie didn't mind he would go over to the farthest pasture where he could see her then and draw her out to see what was in her! This sounded terrible to me, knowing that he used some sickly smelling stuff on the bugs that killed them before they had time to say a word, and I thought maybe because Emma Belle was a poor servant girl he was going to do her the same way.

He had always seemed such a kind-hearted man to me, and I saw him and Emma Belle standing at the fence talking and he was not trying to hold anything to her nose, still I didn't feel easy till he got back. Mrs. Young asked him what he had learned, and if his novel would be along "socialistic lines" or a "romance in a simple bucolic setting." That "bucolic" reminded me of Bertha's little innocent baby, and I wished I was at home nursing it even if it did cry, rather than be out sun-rising with such a peculiar man. He said it would be a "pastoral," and that the girl's eyes were exactly like his first sweetheart's, which was remarkable. Mrs. Young spoke up right quick and said there wasn't anything remarkable in that, because all common, country girls looked alike and they all had about as much expression as a squash.

We haven't been out early acting like Thoreau any more, for Mrs. Young said it was the most foolish of all the foolish things Augustus had made her do, and he could continue to associate with milkmaids by himself if he wanted to, which he has. This morning she came over to our house early to ask mother if you singed a picked chicken over a blaze or what, and if she didn't think Thoreau was an idiot. Mother said yes, you did, if it had pin feathers on it, and she didn't know much about Thoreau, but she preferred men that paid taxes and ate off of white tablecloths. Mrs. Young said she thought all men that read bugology and admired pictures like Hosea were a little idiotic and she wished she had married a man like father. Mother said well, she better not be too sure, for they all have their faults.

After a good long time Professor Young came in, not finding Marie at the bungalow, looking awful hot and cross. The sight of him seemed to make Mrs. Young feel worse than ever and she told him she had just come over to consult mother about her journey home to-morrow, although she hadn't mentioned it to us before. She went on to say that he might spend the rest of the summer, or the rest of his life if he wanted to, boarding over at Mrs. Hedges' where he could see Emma Belle morning, noon and night, instead of only in the morning. He said why, he was utterly surprised for she hadn't mentioned such a thing to him before, but she told him he hadn't spent enough time with her lately even to know whether or not she still retained the power of speech. He said right quick, oh, he never doubted that! She said, well, she was going and he needn't argue with her. He said he wasn't going to argue, he was only too glad to leave such a blasted place, for he wanted material for his novel, but the farmer's girl he had talked with the first morning, and the plow-boys he had been associating with ever since were all such fools he couldn't get any material from them.

The minute he said that she seemed to feel better and change her mind. She said Augustus ought to be ashamed to talk that way about poor ignorant things which never had any opportunities! He said he wanted to go back to the city anyway where there was a bath-tub, but she told him he was very foolish to think about leaving such a cool, "Arcadian" spot; their friends would all laugh at them for coming back so soon. She said she had merely mentioned going back for his pleasure, for all the world knew how she loved the country. He finally said he loved it too, so they would stay, but he would be forced to give up novel-writing because the country people around here are all fools.

I've heard Professor Young talk about sitting in a college chair being a hard life, and Doctor Gordon says doctoring is a hard life, and Rufe says that editing is a hard life, but, my diary, between you and me, from the looks of things this morning, I kinder believe that marrying is a hard life, too.

CHAPTER V

Did you ever think what a dear old thing anybody's black mammy is, my diary, especially when she's done all the cooking (and raised you) for twenty-five years? Mammy Lou has belonged to us just like father and mother ever since we've been at housekeeping, and my heart almost breaks to-night when I think of the fire in our stove that won't burn and the dasher in our churn that is still. Ever since I've been keeping a diary I've been awfully glad to hear about anybody being in love, and took great pleasure in watching them and writing it all out, for I could always imagine it was me that was the lady. But I would rather never keep a diary another day than to have such a thing happen to Mammy Lou.

When mother heard about it she said not to be an old fool, but Mammy Lou said, "either Marse Shakespeare or Marse Solomon said a old fool was the biggest fool and she wasn't going to make him out no lie. So marry that Yankee nigger she was!"

Bill Williams first came here to teach school, being very proud and educated. Then he got to be Dilsey's beau and they expected to marry. When he first commenced going to see Dilsey Mammy Lou would cook the nicest kind of things for her to take to picnics, hoping to help her catch him in a motherly way. But when he started to promising to give Dilsey a rocking-chair and take her to "George Washington" if she would marry him, Mammy Lou changed about. She had always wanted to see a large city herself, and she thought it wasn't any use of letting Dilsey get all the best things in life, even if she was her child.

Pretty soon she commenced wearing red ribbon around her neck and having her hair wrapped fresh once a week. Then she told him she was the good cook that cooked all the picnic things, and ironed all of Dilsey's clean dresses; also that she had seventy-five dollars saved up that she would be willing to spend on a grand bridal trip the next time she got married. Mammy Lou is a smart old thing, and so she talked to him until he said, well, he would just as soon marry her as Dilsey, if she would stop cooking for us, and cook for him and iron his shirts all the time. She promised him she would do this, like people always do when they're trying to marry a person, although it looks very different afterward. None of mammy's other husbands had been so proud. They would not only let her cook, but would come around every meal time, in the friendliest kind of way, and help her draw a bucket of water. This is why the whole family's heart is breaking and we feel so hungry to-night. She's quit, and the wedding is to-morrow.

This morning early she came up to the house to ask mother if it would be excusable to take off her widow's bonnet, not being divorced from Uncle Mose but four months; also how she had better carry her money to keep Bill from getting "a holt" of it. She said she wouldn't trust any white Yankee with a half a dollar that she ever saw, much less a coffee-colored one. Mother was so mad at her, and so troubled about the sad biscuits and the watery gravy at breakfast that she said she hoped he would steal every cent of the seventy-five dollars before the ceremony was over, and maybe that would bring her to her senses.

"And me not to get to go to George Washington!" mammy said in a hurt-like voice. "Why, Mis' Mary!"

"Where is this George Washington?" mother took time to ask, thinking mammy would know she was just poking fun at her, but she didn't.

"Law! Ain't it surprising how little my white folks do know! Why, it's the place where the president and his wife lives. Mr. Williams is mighty well acquainted with the president and says he's shore I could git a job cooking for the fambly if I was 'round lookin' for jobs. But I ain't to cook for nobody but him from now on."

Mother didn't encourage her to talk about her love and matrimony any, so she took me by the hand and we went out and sat down on the kitchen doorstep and had a long conversation. She seemed mighty sad at the notion of leaving us, but was so delighted at the idea of marrying a young man (as anybody naturally would be) that she couldn't think of giving that up. Pretty soon in our conversation she commenced telling me about the things that happened many years ago, when I was a little child, like they say folks do when they're going on a long journey or die.

She began from the time I was born, and said I was such a brown little thing that I looked like I had tobacco-juice running through me instead of blood. And I made use of a bottle until I was four years old. Because I was the only one of mother's and father's children that lived and was born to them like Isaac (I don't know of any special way that Isaac was born, but two of mammy's husbands have been preachers, so she knows what she's talking about) they let me keep the bottle to humor me. It had a long rubber thing to it so I would find it more convenient. Mammy said the old muley cow was just laid aside for my benefit, they thought so much of me, and when I got big enough to walk I'd go with her into the cow-lot every hour in the day and drag my bottle behind me to be milked into. I enjoyed being milked into my mouth, too, if my bottle was too dirty to hold it just then.

Mammy said I always admired the sunshine so much that I would sit out in it on hot days till my milk bottle would clabber, which was one cause of my brownness. When I found out I couldn't draw anything up through the rubber, being all clabbered, I'd begin to cry and run with my bottle to mammy. And she would quiet me by digging out all the clabber with a little twig and feed it to the chickens. They got to knowing the sound of me and my bottle rattling over the gravels so well that they'd all come a running like they do when they hear you scrape the plates.

This, of course, was very touching to us both and we nearly cried when she talked about going off to Washington where the people are too stylish to keep a muley cow. They won't even keep a baby in the families there, but the ladies keep little dogs and get divorces.

Mother wouldn't go to the wedding, for dinner and supper were worse than breakfast. The rest of the family all went except Dilsey, who didn't much like the way her mother had treated her about Bill. Professor and Mrs. Young went, being still down there and a great pleasure to us all. They were delighted, being raised up North, and wanted to take pictures of everything. Whenever we would pass a cabin door with a nigger and his guitar sitting in it and picking on it they would stop and say that it was so "picturesque." And the real old uncles with white hair and the mammies with their heads tied up they said reminded them of "Aunty Bellum days."

Everything went off as nice as could be expected under the circumstances until the preacher said, "Salute your bride." Then, when Bill started to kiss her, Mammy Lou laid her hand against the side of his head so hard you could have heard the pop up to the big house and said she would show him how to be impudent to a woman of sixty, even if he was a Yankee and educated. Everybody passed it off as a joke, but the slap didn't seem to set very well with Bill, being nineteen years old and not used to such. We left right after the ceremony and Mammy Lou and the others walked on down to her house to wait for the twelve o'clock train that they were going to leave on.

Although I always enjoy going to places with the Youngs on account of the curious words and the camera they use, and although it was the sixth marriage of my old nurse, which you don't get a chance to see every day, still when I think of breakfast, I must say it was the saddest wedding I ever witnessed.

This morning when I first woke up and heard that regular old tune, Play on Your Harp, Little David, coming so natural and lifelike from the kitchen I thought surely it must be a dream, mammy being hundreds of miles away in Washington. The song kept on, though, just like it has done every morning for twenty-five years, mother says:

"Shad-rach, Me-shach, Abed-ne-go,

The Lord has washed me white as snow,"

so I got up. It never does take me a minute to wash my face of a morning, and this morning it took even less time. I hopped into my clothes and flew down-stairs. It wasn't any dream! There was mammy, not looking like she was married nor anything, and a good, cheerful fire in the stove, and the bacon smelling like you were nearly starved. I didn't ask any questions, but just said, "Mammy," and she said, "Baby," and there I was hugging her fit to turn over the churn. I asked her if mother knew that she come back and she said no, she had been easy and not made any noise, so as to surprise us all. I reckon mother and father are so used to having Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego wake them up of a morning that they thought it was a dream, too. Pretty soon they heard us talking though and came in. Mother came first, for it is the gentleman's place to let the lady go first into the kitchen, especially when they think that breakfast is to be got.

Mother said, "What are you doing here?" and Mammy Lou said, "Getting breakfast, Mis' Mary," which was about as straightforward as they could have been with each other. Mother asked her if she wasn't still married, and she said no, for she had "had occasion to give that uppish Yankee nigger a good whippin' las' night." And then she went on to say that she told Dilsey she could have him if she still wanted him, and said she hoped Dilsey would take him for she would just admire to be mother-in-law to that nigger.

Just then father came in, hearing the last remark about "that nigger," and asked Mammy Lou what the trouble was between her and her new husband. Mammy was breaking eggs into the big yellow bowl which she was going to scramble for breakfast, and as she commenced telling us about her marrying troubles she began to beat them very hard, which seemed to ease her. It is a great help to people to think of their enemies when they are beating things, for it makes them beat all the harder and don't really hurt the enemies.

Mammy said when they got home from the wedding she started to change her white dress and veil and put on her good cashmere dress to ride on the train in. Just about that time Mr. Williams spoke up and said he was sleepy and wanted to get a good night's rest so he was going to bed, but he wanted mammy to have him a nice rare steak for his breakfast. Mammy then asked him if he had been born a fool or just turned that way since he had married so far above his station. He said he would mighty soon find out who the fool was in that family—and she better have good beaten biscuits to go with the steak. When he said this mammy gave him another sample of her strength like she did in the church and told him to get out of there and change his clothes to go to George Washington. Then he gave a big ha! ha! laugh in her face, right before Dilsey and the neighbors and said why, didn't she know that George Washington had been dead and buried behind the church door for a hundred years? He kept on laughing and said the "ignorance of country niggers is really amusable."

Mammy said she hated to do it with her veil on, being a new veil and she hadn't used it but twice, but she couldn't wait to take it off, him grinning like a picture-taking man at his funny joke. All his teeth were showing, and, as mammy had always admired them for being so big and white, she decided she would keep a handful to remember him by; so she gave him one good lick in the mouth with her wedding slipper, which was large and easy to come off. This broke a good half of his front tooth, she said, besides drawing a lot of blood to relieve her feelings. While he was busy wiping away the blood and trying to open his eyes enough to see candle-light again, mammy sat down by him, and, before he knew it, she had dragged him across her lap and was paddling him like he was her own dear son instead of her husband. Then she called Dilsey and told her she might feel safe about marrying him now, if she still wanted him, for he had better sense than to try to fool with any member of that family again. Mammy Lou said of course she couldn't stay married to a man she could paddle. She was too much of a lady. But Dilsey turned up her nose and said she wouldn't have any second-hand nigger, much less a whipped one.

Father spoke up then and said she couldn't give Bill to Dilsey without getting a divorce from him first. Mammy Lou said, well, Marse Sheriff might arrest her and Marse Judge might fine her, but she would see them all in the place that was prepared for them before she would waste twenty-five dollars for just that little speck of marrying!

Father went on out to feed the chickens and mother went to wake up Bertha (but not the baby) for breakfast, and Mammy Lou scraped the eggs into the dish I had brought her.

"Divorce nothin'," I heard her remark as she soused the hot skillet into water that sizzled, "I done bought a hundred dollars' worth o' divorces already, and if the lawyers wasn't all scribes and Pharisees they'd let that run me the rest o' my days."

CHAPTER VI

"Yuletide in the Southland" is what Professor Young calls it, but you would never know from the sound how nice it really is. It means that the Youngs have come down to the bungalow to spend Christmas and have brought his brother, Julius, to spend it too. Now, I admire Mr. Julius Young, both his name and his ways. He noticed me the minute he got off the train and said I would have to be his sweetheart. Although I have learned, from being so deceived by Doctor Gordon's remarks like that, you mustn't depend on what they say, still you can't help but like a person when they say it to you.

He is not a college professor like his brother, but he makes his living drawing pictures. Now, the bad part about making your living out of poetry or art is that so often you don't do it. This is the way with Julius. He draws fully as good as other artists, but he never has been able to get people to notice it. Professor Young says his work lacks "the divine spark," and so the poor young man has to heat his coffee over the gas-jet, like they always have to do in pitiful magazine stories. So much poetry and art have made him real thin, with strange flannel shirts, and he looks half like a writing person and half like a hero which was raised out West. He doesn't act as peculiar as he looks, though, laughing as jolly as Mr. Parkes if anything funny happens. And he knows so much about horses, having traveled considerable, that father thinks he is very clever. Father says you can excuse an artist with horse sense better than you can just a plain artist.

Rufe and Cousin Eunice are down in the country too, partly at our house and partly at Rufe's folks'. This makes a nice reunion for them, being as Marcella, Rufe's sister, is home for the first time in three Christmases, having been off studying how to play on the piano.

Ever since during the chestnuts getting ripe Marcella has been good friends with me, for she loves the outdoors, and there wasn't anybody but me that had the time to spare to go with her through the woods. She felt sorry for me, too, not getting to go back to school in the city this fall, and so she has taught me a lot. Mother and father said they just couldn't spare me, being the only one that lived, and born to them in their old age. It looks like if my brothers and sisters had known how inconvenient it was for me to be the only child they would have tried a little harder to live.

Marcella is not pretty in a blonde-headed way, like Ann Lisbeth and Bertha, but her hair and eyes are as dark as chocolate candy when you've grated a whole half a cake in it, and her skin looks like cream does when it's nearly ready to churn. She wouldn't go with me and Rufe and Cousin Eunice to meet the Youngs at the train, being ashamed on Julius' account, I reckon, both being single. But we went and Professor and Mrs. Young said they were too happy for anything to be back in the country again for a regular old-fashioned Christmas. They said they were going to do everything just like it used to be in old England, which Professor Young had brought a book along to read about. They said this book would "infuse a genuine Yule spirit," but if they had scraped as many cake pans and seeded as many raisins as I have they would have more of that spirit now than they could hold without a dose of cordial.

Well, this morning we collected on the other side of the creek to go after holly to decorate the bungalow with, me, the Youngs, and Rufe and Cousin Eunice. Julius said a good many compliments about the nature you could see all over the hills, but Rufe said shucks, if he had plowed over that nature as often as he had it wouldn't look so pretty.

Cousin Eunice said let's go straight up through the woods and maybe we would meet Marcella coming back from a poor person's house where she had been to carry sick folks' things to. This plan must have been made up between them, for, sure enough, when we got to the tip-top of the hill we found Marcella sitting under some cedar trees resting, and leaning back against one, just like it was done for a purpose. She had on her red hat and her little red jacket, which set off her pale looks considerable, and if she did do it for the sake of Julius she knew the right way to get on the good side of an artist, for he commenced acting impressed from the start. If a person is trying to be romantic it is a better plan to meet a man under a cedar tree with a tired expression than it is to sprain your ankle so they will have to carry you home in their arms, like they do in books. I don't know why authors sprain so many of their characters' ankles, and then let them make love smelling of liniment.

For the sake of Julius

Mother says in olden times people married each other because the ladies were pretty and could make good cakes and the young men were able to take care of them, but nowadays they marry because they "feel" the same way about things. This is called congenial, and an overly congenial person is an "affinity." Cousin Eunice and Rufe felt the same way about Keats and married. Doctor Gordon and Ann Lisbeth both loved white hyacinths and married, and this morning I heard Marcella and Julius say they felt the same way about music. Marcella was playing on the piano in our parlor and we were all listening when Julius remarked:

"Oh, isn't it rare to find a woman who can properly interpret Beethoven?"

Father was in the room and spoke up. "Yes," he said, "and rarer still, in these days, to find one who can properly interpret the bake-oven."

Marcella thinks the world and all of Beethoven and Wagner and other persons whose names are not spelt the way you would think.

Later, when there wasn't anybody present but just those two, I heard Julius ask Marcella if she would "sit" to him. I thought at first he must be proposing, for the folks around here say that Widow Hollis is "setting up to" anybody when she's trying to marry. But Marcella said right away that she would be delighted, which I knew couldn't mean marrying, for when a young lady gets proposed to she never even lets on how glad she is, much less says delighted right out in plain words. He said her face was the purest Greek he ever saw, which didn't make her mad, although it would me, for a Greek is a smiling, oily-looking person which runs a candy kitchen.

When he mentioned her face looking like a Greek's face she acted so pleased that he went on to tell her he had never been so impressed with anybody's looks in his life as he was with hers that first day under the cedar tree. He said oh, if he had such a model he could do anything, for he was sure she had soul as well as beauty. The idea of him telling her she had a soul—as if anybody but foreign heathens didn't have! She said she thought it would be a noble life to be a model and inspiration to a man of lofty ideals—like Dan T. Gabriel Rosetty's wife was, only sometimes the woman was starved. If I'd been Marcella I'd been ashamed to mention such a thing as not getting enough to eat, but it seemed to please Julius, for he got over closer and commenced making a sketch of her on the back of an envelope.

This morning early Mrs. and Professor Young came over to ask father where they could find a Yule log and a peacock. They said in the "eternal fitness of things" they must have a log to burn all Christmas night and a peafowl to serve with "brilliant plumage" at the dinner table. Mrs. Young went around to the kitchen to ask Mammy Lou if she knew how to prepare the peacock the way they wanted it and brought to the table in its feathers with the tail spread. Mammy wasn't a speck more polite than she was last summer about the roosters.

"No, ma'am," she told her, "Mis' Mary won't let even so much as a pin feather come on her table, much less a whole crittur covered with 'em. Looks like that would turn a nigger's stomach, let alone white folks; but there ain't no 'countin' for the taste o' Yankees."

Professor Young tried to explain that he was cooked without the feathers which was put on afterward and an old English custom, but that wouldn't pacify mammy.

"Well, all I can say for the old English is that they must have stomachs on 'em like buzzards," mammy told them.

The Yule log was easier and so they got that, but it isn't to be lit till to-morrow night with ceremony.

Julius and Marcella had a long walk through the woods after sarsaparilla vines this afternoon, and talked a good deal about how they would like a house furnished if they were going to furnish one. They never got as far as the kitchen and smokehouse, but they both agreed that they would love better than anything in the world to have a dark green library with dull brass jardinieres. (I had a terrible time with that word.) Julius then spoke up and said any kind of a library that had her in it would be artistic enough for him, which I thought was saying a great deal, for artists make out like they can't live without their "atmosphere," meaning battered-up tea-kettles and dirty curtains from Persia. Marcella must have thought he meant something by it, too, for she turned as red as when you have a breaking out.

I helped mother and mammy considerable this morning by tasting all the things to see if they were just right, for we are going to have a big dinner to-morrow and invite them all.

To-night we all went over to the bungalow to hear Professor Young read about how they used to do Christmas things in England before the Pilgrim Fathers. It sounded awful nice about the waifs singing, "God rest you, merry gentlemen," on the outside of your window, and the servants at dinner bringing in the boar's head, singing too. Professor Young said he thought these old customs ought to be revived, especially in the South, where we had old-timey houses and old family servants. Father laughed and said, well, we might get Mammy Lou to bring in the turkey to-morrow to the tune of "There wuz er moanin' lady, she lived in er moanin' lan'," which was all the tune she knew besides Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, one being about as Christmasy as the other.

After a while Mrs. Young started up the chafing-dish and called Julius from over in the corner where he and Marcella were talking very easy, to help her with the coffee. She hadn't more than said coffee when Professor Young picked up his book again.

"Why, Marie, my love," he interrupted her, "coffee is not at all a drink in keeping with the season. To preserve the unities we ought to have a wassail bowl." Then he read us how easy it was to make up the wassail. All you have to do is to take wine, or ale, and sugar and nutmeg, mixed with ginger and spice, then have apples and toast and roasted crabs floating around in it. You must mix it up in an old silver bowl that has been in your family a hundred years with the coat of arms on it. A coat of arms is two peculiar animals standing on their hind legs pawing at each other.

Mrs. Young said she was as anxious to preserve the unities as Augustus, but how could she when there wasn't any wine or ale or ginger or crabs, to say nothing of the silver bowl with the coat of arms marked on it. Rufe said not to worry, for we might find it hard, along toward midnight and day, to preserve much unity between wassail and Welsh rabbit, if we ate them together, so the wassail bowl was dropped.

All during my diary there hasn't been a thing as thrilling to happen as what happened to-day, Christmas Day, to Julius and Marcella. Getting your arm broken and carried to the hospital by your future husband wasn't anything to compare with this.

Everybody was happy at the dinner table, me especially, for besides all the books I wanted I got a pyrography set and a pearl ring. I don't think any girl is complete without a pearl ring. The company all praised mammy's cooking and Julius remarked that after such a dinner as that it would be pretty tough on a fellow to go back to town the next day and live on coffee heated over the gas-jet and crackers. We laughed considerable over the gas-jet, all but Marcella, who didn't look funny.

Just as we got the plum pudding burning and Julius had said he wished he could paint a picture of it Dilsey came into the dining-room with a telegram addressed to Mr. Julius Young. This excited Mammy Lou, who admires him very much, so she nearly spilt all the sauce, saying, "Thar! I jes' know it's some of yo' folks dead!"

Julius laughed and told her he reckoned not, as all the folks he had on earth were right there at the table, and he looked at Marcella when he said it in preference to his own brother! Much to all of our disappointment Julius never even opened his telegram and read it, although we didn't say anything about it. He put it in his pocket and went on eating pudding like it wasn't any more to be proud of than just a plain mail letter.

After dinner father took them all out in the garden to look at some new hotbeds he was having made and Julius and Marcella went into the parlor. I stayed in the hall by the door, not being wanted in the parlor and not admiring hotbeds much. They didn't sit down, but went over and stood by the piano and all of a sudden Marcella said nervous-like:

"Why don't you read your telegram? It might contain good news."

"It is good news, I feel sure," he told her, "and I wanted you to be the first one to know it—that's the reason I didn't mention it at the table."

She said well hurry up and tell her, so he did. He said the day he saw her leaning against the cedar tree he thought she was so beautiful that he went straight back to the bungalow and made a picture of her like she was then and sent it to a large magazine up North which had promised to give five thousand dollars to the person which sent them the best picture by Christmas, and he believed the telegram was to say that his was it. Marcella told him well, he had a high opinion of his work to take it for granted that it had won such a prize as that.

"Not at all," he said, catching her hand in his, "for it was a picture of you."

This sounded so loving that I wasn't prepared for what came next. I heard them tear open the telegram and Marcella said, "Good-ness;" and he said, "Well, I'll be—I wasn't looking for this!" and it made me so interested that before I knew it I was in the parlor, though so easy and it nearly dark that I don't think they saw me.

As near as I could make out the telegram told Julius they thought his picture was so good they were not only going to give him the prize like they promised, but wanted to engage him to draw for them all the next year and how much salary would he do it for.

"Why, you can have your green library and brass jardinieres now," Marcella said, still holding hands and her voice like it was about to cry. He just looked at her and looked a long time without saying a word. Finally he put both hands on her shoulders and looked down into her eyes.

"I can have nothing without you," he said in the most devoted voice I ever heard. "It is your beauty that has made my picture succeed. If I amount to anything you will have to come with me—will you?"

"You want me for your model?" she asked very quivery and making out like she didn't know what he was driving at, but she put her hands up on his shoulders too, which was enough to give her away.

"True, I can not draw without you for my model," he said so grand and sweet that it made you feel very strange listening to it, "but I can not live without you for my wife."

This won her. It was enough to win anybody, coming from an artist, and good looking at that.

CHAPTER VII

Being in love with Marcella weighed so on Julius' mind that he couldn't stay in New York but one week where the magazine is that he draws for, so he came back and has been here ever since, loving and drawing and sending them the jobs by mail. Right away they set the wedding for the eleventh of April, which seems like it never will come, me being in a big hurry for it. Poor Julius gets more and more delighted every day, talking a heap about what a happy home they're going to have, not realizing that Chopin and dish-pan don't go together. He stays around and advises Marcella about her clothes and such-like all day long. He says she reminds him of a narcissus, being tall and creamy-skinned, so he wants all her dresses to be either white or light green, the color of right young lettuce. But she knows when really to take his advice and when just to make like she's taking it, the way most ladies do with men.

"Why, it would take a little pink milksop like Bertha Parkes to wear such colors as those," she said behind his back one day. But I don't think Marcella better be calling Bertha a milksop just because she has to handle baby-bottles all the time, for a person never can tell what might happen to them.

One of the nicest things about the wedding is the bridesmaids. They consist of girls born partly here in the country, partly in the cities Marcella has visited and made friends with. The one I like best is Miss Cicely Reeves, though most people around here call her Cis, being very small, with fluffy hair and cute ways and dimples. She has a good many lovers of different kinds, but don't seem to like one above another. She is a great hand to act romantic, such as falling in love with a man in a streetcar, or expecting her future husband to be a certain size and comb his hair a certain way and things like that. This often keeps young ladies from getting married a long time, for mother says you oughtn't to be too choice about size and hair, but I can't help being on that order myself. I do hope I can marry a man on a jet-black charger named Sir Reginald de Beverley who owns acres and acres of English landed gentry.

Miss Cis had that experience with the name of Julius' best man. It happened that we were all sitting on the front step one day when Julius pulled a letter out of his pocket and told Marcella that he had just heard from Malcolm Macdonald, and that he was going to be his best man.

"Who?" asked Miss Cis right quick, looking up from the sprig of bridal wreath she was pulling the flowers off of.

Julius told her the name over again and then told her that he was a very old friend of his and was a fine civil engineer. I used to think a civil engineer was a polite man who ran the trains, but I know now he is a man that gets in the middle of the street with a string and a three-legged thing and measures the road.

"Is he married?" Miss Cis asked a heap quicker than she had asked who.

"No, and not likely to be," Julius answered, still looking over the letter absent-mindedly.

"The name sounds good," Miss Cis commenced, her eyes sparkling. "I never heard anything Scotchier. Something tells me he must be my ideal."

"Then 'something' must be telling you a lie," Julius said laughing, "for he couldn't be any woman's ideal. He is very real. An old bachelor, thirty-seven years, stern and precise; and he considers every woman on earth as a frivolous and unnecessary evil."

"The kind of man I adore," Miss Cis said joyfully, though anybody that knew her well could tell she was fooling. "My life will be a blank until he comes!"

"It would be a blankety-blank if you had to live with him, for you are the kind of woman to torment such a man to death."

"All the more reason for his falling in love with me, as I have fallen in love with his name, and if he doesn't I shall consider him a very uncivil engineer." Which was just her way of talking. This happened fully two months ago, but they have talked about it off and on ever since. And now he is coming to stay with Julius till the wedding, to cheer him up I suppose.

Sure enough he did come to-day, although lots of times I imagine that I never will get to see a person I have heard spoken of so often and in such high tones—and sometimes I wish I hadn't. But it wasn't that way with Mr. Macdonald. Nobody on earth could have been disappointed in him for he is one of the tallest gentlemen I ever saw with trousers so smoothly creased that they look like somebody had ironed them after he put them on. He takes his own time about saying things, being very careful about saying "of whom" and "by which" like the grammar tells you to.

Julius brought him over to Marcella's this afternoon so he could be making friends with her and the bridesmaids that were collected there. Remembering how they had been teasing Miss Cis about him I kept my eye on her from the minute he walked through the door. I was greatly disappointed though, for she never seemed to notice him. I guess she took a better look at him than I imagined though, for the minute they were gone she jumped clear across the room to where Marcella was standing and grabbed her and danced up and down.

"Isn't he beautiful!" she said all out of breath. "I'm just crazy about him! Did you ever see such Gibsony feet and legs in your life?" Which mortified her mother, it being impolite to mention feet and legs in her days.

Julius is romantic, too, for a man, and says he doesn't want any flowers used in connection with his wedding except the sweet, early spring ones that favor Marcella so much. We have a yard full of them and so mother told them this morning that they better come over and gather them, knowing that young folks enjoy picking flowers together and they will stay fresh for several days if you put a little salt in the water.

It was the most beautiful morning you ever saw, with birds and peach blossoms and the smell of plowed ground all making curious feelings inside of you. Marcella, being a musician, noticed the birds, and Julius, being an artist, noticed the peach blossoms, but Mr. Macdonald, being just a man, noticed Miss Cis. She would walk along without noticing him and take a seat in the farthest corner away from him, but anyhow she seemed to do the work, which taught me a lesson; that if you're trying to get a man to notice you it is the best plan not to notice them except when they ain't looking.

They sat down on the porch and rested a while after they came while the narcissuses (narcissi they called them, which sounds stuck up to me) smelled very sweet from the yard. Julius remarked he wished they had made Rufe come along with them so he could have said poetry out of Keats, as it was just the kind of day to make you feel Keatsy; and pretty soon he and Marcella got on to their favorite subject, "The Ruby Yacht," which they say is a piece of poetry from Persia. They talked and talked, which made me very sleepy and pretty soon I noticed that Mr. Macdonald was getting sleepy too. He leaned over to Miss Cis and said, kinder whispery:

"I don't understand poetry, do you?"

"No, I don't," she answered back, with a smile on her face which I knew she meant to be "congenial." I knew this was a story, for she talks about "The Ruby Yacht" as much as anybody when he ain't around, but I didn't blame her for telling one in a case like this.

"I never could discover what the deuced Ruby Yacht was about, in the first place," he said.

"It looks like, from the name," I said speaking up, "that it would be about a red ship," but before I could get any further they began to laugh and tell my remark to Julius and Marcella, which was mortifying. This broke up the poetry talk and they began gathering the flowers, Miss Cis and Mr. Macdonald picking in pairs, by which I knew they were getting affinityfied.

After they had picked till their backs were tired Mammy Lou came out on the porch bringing a waiter with some of her best white cake and a bottle of her year-before-last-before-that's wine setting on it and her finest ruffled cap, very proud. She was curious to see the young man "Miss Cis was settin' up to, to see whether the match was a fittin' one or not." She took a good look at him, then called Miss Cis into the hall to speak her opinion.

"He'll do," I heard her saying, while Miss Cis was telling her to "s-s-sh, Mr. MacDonald would hear her."

"He'll do," mammy kept on, not paying any attention to what was told her, like she always don't. "He must be all right, for bein' a frien' o' Mr. Juliuses would pass 'im.' But, honey, he is tolerable po-faced, which ain't no good sign in marryin'. If thar's anybody better experienced in that business than me and King Solomon I'd like to see the whites o' ther eyes; an' I tell you every time, if you want to get a good-natured, wood-cuttin', baby-tendin' husban' choose one that's fat in the face!"