Lavender and Old Lace Part 20

"But, Aunty," objected Ruth, struggling with inward emotion, "I couldn't sign my name to it, you know, unless I had written the letters."

"Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't be honest," she answered, clutching at the straw, "the person who wrote the letters would be ent.i.tled to the credit--and the money," she added hopefully.

"Why, yes, that's right. Do you hear James? It'll have to be your book, 'The Love Letters of a Sailor,' by James, and dedicated in the front 'to my dearly beloved wife, Jane Ball, as was Jane Hathaway.' It'll be beautiful, won't it, James?"

"Yes'm, I hev no doubt but what it will."

"Do you remember, James, how you borrered a chisel from the tombstone man over to the Ridge, and cut our names into endurin' granite?"

"I'd forgot that--how come you to remember it?"

"On account of your havin' lost the chisel and the tombstone man a-worryin' me about it to this day. I'll take you to the place. There's climbin' but it won't hurt us none, though we ain't as young as we might be. You says to me, you says: 'Jane, darlin', as long as them letters stays cut into the everlastin' rock, just so long I'll love you,' you says, and they's there still."

"Well, I'm here, too, ain't I?" replied Mr. Ball, seeming to detect a covert reproach. "I was allers a great hand fer cuttin'."

"There'll have to be a piece writ in the end, Ruth, explainin' the happy endin' of the romance. If you can't do it justice, James and me can help--James was allers a master hand at writin'. It'll have to tell how through the long years he has toiled, hopin' against hope, and for over thirty years not darin' to write a line to the object of his affections, not feelin' worthy, as you may say, and how after her waitin' faithfully at home and turnin' away dozens of lovers what pleaded violent-like, she finally went travellin' in furrin parts and come upon her old lover a-keepin' a store in a heathen land, a-strugglin' to retrieve disaster after disaster at sea, and constantly withstandin' the blandishments of heathen women as endeavoured to wean him from his faith, and how, though very humble and scarcely darin to speak, he learned that she was willin'

and they come a sailin' home together and lived happily ever afterward.

Ain't that as it was, James?"

"Yes'm, except that there wa'n't no particular disaster at sea and them heathen women didn't exert no blandishments. They was jest pleasant to an old feller, bless their little hearts."

By some subtle mental process, Mr. Ball became aware that he had made a mistake. "You ain't changed nothin' here, Jane," he continued, hurriedly, "there's the haircloth sofy that we used to set on Sunday evenins' after meetin', and the hair wreath with the red rose in it made out of my hair and the white rose made out of your grandmother's hair on your father's side, and the yeller lily made out of the hair of your Uncle Jed's youngest boy. I disremember the rest, but time was when I could say'm all. I never see your beat for makin' hair wreaths, Jane.

There ain't nothin' gone but the melodeon that used to set by the mantel. What's come of the melodeon?"

"The melodeon is set away in the attic. The mice et out the inside."

"Didn't you hev no cat?"

"There ain't no cat, James, that could get into a melodeon through a mouse hole, more especially the big maltese you gave me. I kept that cat, James, as you may say, all these weary years. When there was kittens, I kept the one that looked most like old Malty, but of late years, the cats has all been different, and the one I buried jest afore I sailed away was yeller and white with black and brown spots--a kinder tortoise sh.e.l.l--that didn't look nothin' like Malty. You'd never have knowed they belonged to the same family, but I was sorry when she died, on account of her bein' the last cat."

Hepsey, half frightened, put her head into the room. "Dinner's ready,"

she shouted, hurriedly shutting the door.

"Give me your arm, James," said Mrs. Ball, and Ruth followed them into the dining-room.

The retired sailor ate heartily, casting occasional admiring glances at Ruth and Hepsey. It was the innocent approval which age bestows upon youth. "These be the finest biscuit," he said, "that I've had for many a day. I reckon you made 'em, didn't you, young woman?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hepsey, twisting her ap.r.o.n.

The bride was touched in a vulnerable spot.

"Hepsey," she said, decisively, "when your week is up, you will no longer be in my service. I am a-goin'to make a change."

Mr. Ball's knife dropped with a sharp clatter. "Why, Mis' Ball," he said, reproachfully, "who air you goin' to hev to do your work?"

"Don't let that trouble you, James," she answered, serenely, "the was.h.i.+n' can be put out to the Widder Pendleton, her as was Elmiry Peavey, and the rest ain't no particular trouble."

"Aunty," said Ruth, "now that you've come home and everything is going on nicely, I think I'd better go back to the city. You see, if I stay here, I'll be interrupting the honeymoon."

"No, no, Niece Ruth!" exclaimed Mr. Ball, "you ain't interruptin' no honeymoon. It's a great pleasure to your aunt and me to hev you here--we likes pretty young things around us, and as long as we hev a home, you're welcome to stay in it; ain't she Jane?"

"She has sense enough to see, James, that she is interruptin' the honeymoon," replied Aunt Jane, somewhat harshly. "On account of her mother havin' been a Hathaway before marriage, she knows things. Not but what you can come some other time, Ruth," she added, with belated hospitality.

"Thank you, Aunty, I will. I'll stay just a day or two longer, if you don't mind--just until Mr. Winfield comes back. I don't know just where to write to him."

"Mr.--who?" demanded Aunt Jane, looking at her narrowly.

"Mr. Carl Winfield," said Ruth, crimsoning--"the man I am going to marry." The piercing eyes were still fixed upon her.

"Now about the letters, Aunty," she went on, in confusion, "you could help Uncle James with the book much better than I could. Of course it would have to be done under your supervision."

Mrs. Ball scrutinized her niece long and carefully. "You appear to be tellin' the truth," she said. "Who would best print it?"

"I think it would be better for you to handle it yourself, Aunty, and then you and Uncle James would have all the profits. If you let some one else publish it and sell it, you'd have only ten per cent, and even then, you might have to pay part of the expenses."

"How much does it cost to print a book?"

"That depends on the book. Of course it costs more to print a large one than a small one."

"That needn't make no difference," said Aunt Jane, after long deliberation. "James has two hundred dollars sewed up on the inside of the belt he insists on wearin', instead of Christian suspenders, ain't you, James?"

"Yes'm, two hundred and four dollars in my belt and seventy-six cents in my pocket."

"It's from his store," Mrs. Ball explained. "He sold it to a relative of one of them heathen women."

"It was worth more'n three hundred," he said regretfully.

"Now, James, you know a small store like that ain't worth no three hundred dollars. I wouldn't have let you took three hundred, 'cause it wouldn't be honest."

The arrival of a small and battered trunk created a welcome diversion.

"Where's your trunk, Uncle James?" asked Ruth.

"I ain't a needin' of no trunk," he answered, "what clothes I've got is on me, and that there valise has more of my things in it. When my clothes wears out, I put on new ones and leave the others for some pore creeter what may need 'em worse'n me."

Aunt Jane followed Joe upstairs, issuing caution and direction at every step. "You can set outside now, Joe Pendleton," she said, "and see that them hosses don't run away, and as soon as I get some of my things hung up so's they won't wrinkle no more, I'll come out and pay you."

Joe obeyed, casting longing eyes at a bit of blue gingham that was fluttering among the currant bushes in the garden. Mr. Ball, longing for conversation with his kind, went out to the gate and stood looking up at him, blinking in the bright sunlight. "Young feller," he said, "I reckon that starboard hoss is my old mare. Where'd you get it?"

"Over to the Ridge," answered Joe, "of a feller named Johnson."

"Jest so--I reckon 't was his father I give Nellie to when I went away.

She was a frisky filly then--she don't look nothin' like that now."

"Mamie" turned, as if her former master's voice had stirred some old memory. "She's got the evil eye," Mr. Ball continued. "You wanter be keerful."

"She's all right, I guess," Joe replied.