A Little Florida Lady Part 2

She hid halfway behind her father.

"This is January, Beth."

"What a very queer name," she whispered.

"It is queer, but you are in a strange land. For awhile you'll think you are in fairy-land. Everything will be so different. Do you want to stay with January while I go in to bring your mother?"

She nodded that she did. Mr. Davenport reentered the hotel. Beth seated herself upon the curbstone, and looked at the bay horse behind which she was soon to have the bliss of driving. She thought it about as nice a horse as she had ever seen. Her curiosity overcame her momentary shyness. "Is it your horse, January?"

He smiled. "No, 'deed, missy, but I raised her from a colt, and she loves me like I wuz her ma.s.sa. Why, she runs to me from de pasture when I jes' calls, while she's dat ornary wid odders, dey jes' can't cotch her. It takes old January to cotch dis horse, don't it, Dolly?"

The horse whinnied.

"Is Dolly her name?"

"Dat's what I calls her, honey. It ain't her real name. Her real name----"

"Oh, has she a nickname, too? She's like me then. My name isn't really Beth."

"'Deed?" he asked with polite interest.

"It's Elizabeth, but I'm called that only when I have tantrums."

"What am dem, missy?"

"Well," she blus.h.i.+ngly stammered, "I sometimes forget to be good, and then I can't help having them--tantrums, you know. Just like the little girl with the curl who, when she was bad, was horrid. January, are you ever horrid?"

He looked self-conscious. "Law, missy, I nebber tinks I am, but t.i.tus 'lows I am, but he don't know much nohow."

Dolly whinnied again, which recalled Beth's thoughts to the horse.

"Who owns Dolly, January?"

"Law, missy, didn't I tole yo' dat she 'longs to yer paw now?"

Beth was so excited that she jumped to her feet, and began to clap her hands.

Her antics made her parents and Marian smile as they came from the hotel.

"Mamma, she's our horse. January said so. Dolly, do you like me?"

Dolly p.r.i.c.ked up her ears as if she understood, and whinnied.

"She wants some sugar," declared Beth, believing that she understood horse language. She took a stale piece of candy out of her pocket, and gave it to Dolly. This attention sealed a never-ending friends.h.i.+p between the two.

"Dolly's the surprise, isn't she?" asked Beth, running up to her father. He smiled enigmatically, and that was all the answer she received.

Meantime, January, hat in hand, was bowing with Chesterfieldian politeness to Mrs. Davenport and Marian.

"All aboard," cried Mr. Davenport.

"Let me sit with January," begged Beth.

Marian, also, expressed a like wish. The two children, therefore, scrambled up in front beside the driver, while Mr. and Mrs. Davenport took the back seat.

January sat bolt upright. His dignity fitted the occasion. His driving, however, worried Beth.

She loved to go fast. She knew no fear of horses. She would have undertaken to drive the car of Phaeton, himself, had she been given the chance. She had little patience to poke along, and that was exactly what Dolly did when January drove.

"Can't she go faster?" she asked.

"She don't 'pear to go very fast, does she?" said January mildly.

"Missy Beth, yo' jes' wait until her racing blood am up, and den she'll go so fast, yo'll wish she didn't go so fast."

Beth had her doubts of this, and even of Dolly's racing blood. Its truth, however, was to be proven by a later experience which will be told in due course.

"Has Dolly really racing blood?" asked Marian. Although January was sitting so straight that it seemed impossible for him to sit any straighter, he stiffened up at least an inch.

"Racing blood? Well, I jes' 'lows she has. Onct she wuz de fastest horse in dis State or any odder, I reckon. She could clean beat ebbery horse far and near. Many's de race I'se ridden her in, an' nebber onct lost. My ole ma.s.sa wuz powerful proud of us. Now he's gone, an' Dolly an' me's gettin' old."

"How old are you, January?"

"Powerful ole, ma.s.sa. I reckon I'm nigh on a hundred."

"That's impossible," interrupted Mrs. Davenport. "When were you born?"

He scratched his head to help his memory. "Well, de truf is, Miss Mary"--he had heard Mr. Davenport call her Mary, and so from the start he addressed her in Southern style--"I can't say 'xactly, but I know I'se powerful old. I wuz an ole man when de wah broke out. I must have been 'bout--well 'bout twenty then."

"The war was only about forty years ago, January," broke in Marian, "and that would make you sixty now."

"I reckon, I'm 'bout dat." He had no idea of his age. The longer the Davenports knew him, the more they realized the truth of this.

Sometimes he would make himself out a centenarian, and then, by his own reckoning, he was not out of his teens.

"Get up, Dolly," he cried. She paid no more attention to this mild command than she would have to the buzzing of a fly--probably not so much.

"Papa, may I drive?" asked Marian in her quiet way. Receiving consent, she took the reins. Dolly soon noticed a difference in drivers.

Presently she went so fast, that she satisfied even Beth as to speed.

"Look at the river," cried Beth. They were driving under great, over-arching trees. To the right of them, between the openings of the trees, the glorious St. Johns was to be seen gleaming under the brilliant tropical sun.

"That's a beautiful hammock yonder," said Mr. Davenport.

Beth could see no hammock. There was a wonderful, intricate growth of shrubs, trees, and vines which formed an almost impenetrable ma.s.s of green, but no hammock.

"Where is it?" she asked. "It seems a very queer place for a hammock."

Mr. Davenport laughed at her, and explained that such a ma.s.s of green is called a hammock in Florida, not hummock as in the North.

Very soon they were past the swamps. The banks of the river grew higher and nice houses were to be seen on either side of the road.