The Comings of Cousin Ann Part 24

"I was calling on Miss Judith. In fact, I had jumped off the trolley at that stop because I hoped she would be there," said Jeff, his face flus.h.i.+ng but his eyes holding a steady light as he looked into those of his father's cousin. He even raised his voice a little so as to make sure that everyone in the room might hear him.

"Well, well!" exploded Big Josh. "You have beat me to it. I was planning to go to-morrow to call on our Cousin Judith Buck. You know she is our cousin, Jeff--not too close, but just close enough. She has been voted into the family when we sat in solemn conclave and now to think of her proving she is kin before we had time to let her know of her election--prove it by taking poor Cousin Ann in and making her welcome! By jingo, she is a more worthy member of the clan than any woman we have in the family. I was all for taking her in because she is so gol darned pretty and up-and-coming. I must confess I wouldn't have been so eager about it if she had been jimber-jawed and cross-eyed, but, by the great jumping jingo, I'd say be my long-lost cousin now if she had a wooden leg, a gla.s.s eye and china teeth!"

"Cousin Ann has left off her wig and her hoop skirts, too," said Jeff, "and old Billy has trimmed his beard, and, what is more, both of them were busy helping--Cousin Ann setting the table and Uncle Billy bringing in wood and mending the fire."

"Did Judith Buck make them do it," asked Mildred. "She was a great boss at school."

"That I don't know, but they seemed very happy in being able to help.

Mrs. Buck told me she was glad to have a visitor. Her daughter is away so much and she gets lonely. Old Uncle Billy is established in a cabin behind the house--"

"The one old d.i.c.k Buck lived in," interrupted Big Josh.

"And the old man told me he was planning to do the fall ploughing with Cupid and Puck. He says they have plenty of pull left in them and my private opinion is that Cousin Ann's old coach will not stand another trip."

"See here," spoke Little Josh, who was the practical member of the family, "this is all very well, but we Bucknors can't sit back and let this little Judy Buck support our old cousin. The girl works night and day for a living and to try to pull the farm her Grandfather Knight left her and her mother back into some kind of fertility. Old Billy and Cousin Ann may set the table and make the fires, but that isn't bringing any money into the business. We've got to reimburse the girl somehow."

"She wouldn't stand for it," said Jeff. "She is as proud as can be to be able to have Cousin Ann visit her."

"Well, then we'll have to find a way that won't hurt her pride. Let's send things to Cousin Ann. It will please the old lady and at the same time help on our Cousin Judith."

"What kind of things?" asked Mr. Bob Bucknor, who had been singularly quiet and thoughtful ever since his mind was relieved as to his cousin's not being lost.

"The kind of things neighbors and kinsmen do for one another in our state and all other states where neighbors are neighborly and where blood is thicker than water, and blue blood thicker than any other kind," exclaimed Big Josh. "When you kill mutton don't you send me a quarter? Well, send one to the Bucks instead. When your potato crop was a failure owing to the bugs getting ahead of you, didn't I share with you? Well, let me share with this girl. When I harvest, aren't all the relations ready to send hands to help if I need help? Who ever helped Judith Buck?

"I bet your smokehouse is full and running over this minute. I know mine is. Well, let them run over in the right channel. We can't do enough for this young cousin. Gee, man, just to think of our being spared the humiliation of having to go to Cousin Ann and, tell her that we couldn't look after her any longer! I break out in a cold sweat whenever I think of how near we came to it.

"If Cupid and Puck can't pull the plough, how about sending your tractor over and getting Cousin Judith's few acres broken up for her in three shakes of a dead sheep's tail? I'd do it if I were closer.

Why, jiminy crickets! We owe her an everlasting debt of grat.i.tude just for persuading Cousin Ann to step out of her wig and hoops, and another one for making that old Billy trim his beard. I believe his beard was what made the other darkeys hate him so, and I know if it hadn't have been for Cousin Ann's hoop skirt and wig she would have been helping the women folk around the house long before this. What they had against her was that she was always company wherever she stayed. I tell you, give me a red-headed girl for managing!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Blessings Begin to Flow

"Well, I say it's a good thing these cousins of yours didn't decide sooner to recognize you, Judy, because if they had we wouldn't have had a single chair with a bottom left in it and the hooked rugs your Grandmother Knight brought to Kentucky would have been nothing but holes," declared Mrs. Buck. "I never saw so much company in my born days and constant setting wears out chairs and constant rocking wears out rugs.

"I don't say as it isn't nice to have company. I've been lonesome, in a way, all my life, because my mother and father weren't much hands at mixing, feeling themselves to be kind of different from the folks here in Kentucky, and then I married young, and trouble came early, and my poor dear husband's father wasn't the kind to attract the kind of people my mother felt were our equals--but now, sakes alive, never a day pa.s.ses but it isn't cousin this and cousin that, coming to call or ringing the 'phone or sending some kind of present to Miss Ann.

"What do they expect Miss Ann to do with a bushel of winter onions and a barrel of potatoes and a keg of cider and a barrel of flour and six sides of bacon, two jowls and three hams, besides two barrels of apples and a hind quarter of the prettiest mutton I've seen for many a day? This morning a truck drove up with enough wood to last us half through the winter--the best kind of oak and pine mixed and all cut stove length ready for splitting. That old Billy is mighty nice about splitting the wood and bringing it in. He's the most respectful colored person I ever saw and the only one I'd ever have around."

Mrs. Buck paused for breath and then proceeded: "While you were off teaching to-day somebody Miss Ann called Cousin Betty Throckmorton came to call and brought two daughters and a grandchild. I was mighty sorry for them to miss you and I told them so. I think Mrs.

Throckmorton rather thought I ought to have said I was sorry for you to miss her, but being as she had come to see you and not you to see her and being as you are a sight better looking than she is or her daughters or the grandchild, I put it the other way. Anyhow, she was a very fine lady and couldn't say enough in praise of some of our furniture.

"She asked me where the secretary in the parlor came from and when I told her it belonged to my mother's side of the house--the Fairbankses--and came over on the third trip of the Mayflower she said no doubt she and I could claim relations.h.i.+p, as she, too, was a Fairbanks. And then she said to Miss Ann that people in the south paid so much more attention to relations.h.i.+p than they did in the north and no doubt she was as close to me as Miss Ann was to you.

"Then I got out that book your Grandmother Knight set such store by, with all of her family written down in it and a picture of the old original Fairbanks home, and Mrs. Throckmorton nearly fell over herself reading it and hunting out where she belonged in it and finally she found her line and then, sure enough, she and I are closer relations than you and Miss Ann. Then she called me Cousin Prudence and asked me to call her Cousin Betty. I'm afraid I can never get the courage to do that, but it does kind of tickle me for them to be claiming relations.h.i.+p with me too. We are the same folks we have always been."

"So we are, Mumsy, but perhaps the other fellow has had a change of heart. Does Cousin Ann like having so many callers?"

"Indeed she does, and she never stops telling them what a fine girl you are. Sometimes I can't believe she is really talking about my little Judy, she makes you out so wonderful. Mrs. Throckmorton--Cousin Betty--said she had got a letter from Mrs. Robert Bucknor, written from Monte Carlo, telling all about the good times they are having. It seems that that Mildred has caught a real beau. Cousin Betty's daughter said she hoped he'd be more faithful than Tom Harbison, and Cousin Betty hushed up. Evidently she didn't want me to know about Tom Harbison--not that I want to know. This beau is a count and rich and middle aged. It looks as though it might be a match. All of the ladies, even Miss Ann, thought it would be a good thing if Mildred married rich and lived abroad. They didn't want anything but good fortune for her, but I could tell they'd like to have her good fortune fall in foreign parts.

"At first Miss Ann was right stand-offish with Mrs. Throckmorton, but that lady went right up to her and kissed her and said, 'See here, Cousin Ann, you might just as well be glad to see me, because I am very glad to see you, and to see you looking so well and so comfortable and I'm also glad to see your pretty white hair and to know you've got some legs.' And Miss Ann laughed and said, 'Thank you, Cousin Betty,' and then they began to visit as sweet as you please.

Old Billy went out and made the colored chauffeur go back and see his house and of all the big talking you ever heard, that old man did the biggest. I came back to the pantry to get out a little wine and cake for the company and I could hear him just holding forth."

"Poor old Uncle Billy! He is proud of having a house," laughed Judith.

"His turkey red curtains are up now and his geranium slips started. He has put on a fresh coat of whitewash, within and without, and his floor is scrubbed so clean you could really make up biscuit on it. It is gratifying, Mumsy, that we have been able to make two old people as happy as we have Cousin Ann and old Uncle Billy. I only hope Cousin Ann doesn't bother you."

"Lands sakes, child, she is a heap of company for me and she is a great help. I don't see how such an old person can step around so lively. She stirred up a cake this morning. She says she has been clipping recipes out of newspapers for years and years but they have always made company of her wherever she has visited before and she has never been able to try any of her recipes. Her cake has got a little sad streak in it, owing to the fire getting low while it was baking, but that wasn't to say her fault altogether, as I told her I'd look after the fire while she picked out walnuts for the icing.

"We had a right good time though while the cake-making was going on and Mr. Big Josh Bucknor came to pa.s.s the time of day. He could not stop but a minute but he nearly split his sides laughing at Miss Ann in a big ap.r.o.n, turning her hand to cooking. She laughed, too, and made as if she was going to hit him with the rolling pin, like that woman in the newspaper named Mrs. Jiggs. Mr. Big Josh brought some fine fish as a present. He said he'd been fis.h.i.+ng and had caught more than he could use."

That evening, after the dishes were washed, Judith, instead of beginning on the photographic work as was her custom, sat silent with folded hands, her head resting against the back of the winged chair.

Her eyes were closed and her face was tense.

"Child, you look so tired," said Miss Ann. "You do too much. I am afraid my being here puts more on you than you can stand."

In all her many decades of visiting, that was the first time Miss Ann had ever suggested to a hostess that she might be troublesome. Judith insisted she was not tired and that Miss Ann was a help and no trouble, but the old lady could but see that there were violet shadows under the girl's eyes and that the contour of her cheek was not so rounded as it had been in the summer.

That night, when Billy came to her room to see if she needed anything before retiring--an unfailing custom of the old man--Miss Ann was on the point of discussing with him the evident fatigue of their beloved young hostess, but before she could open the subject Billy said:

"Miss Ann, I done got a big favor ter ax you. I ain't 'lowin' ter imconvemience you none, but I air gonter go on a little trip. It air goin' on ter fifty years sence I had a sho' 'nuf holiday, bein' as I ain't never been ter say free ter leave you when we've been a visitin'

roun', kase I been always kinder feard you mought need ol' Billy whilst you wa'n't ter say 'zactly at home, but somehows now you seem ter kinder b'long here with Miss Judy an' her maw an' my feets air been eatchin' so much lately th'ain't nothin' fer me ter do but follow the signs an' go on a trip."

"But, Billy--" began Miss Ann.

"Ya.s.sum, I ain't gonter be gone long. It ain't gonter be mo'n three or fo' days, or maybe five or six, but anyhow I's gonter be back here in three shakes er a dead sheep's tail. I kin see, as well as you kin, that Miss Judy air kinder tuckered out what with teachin' an' servin'

up them suppers to the street cyar men. I'm a thinkin' that when I goes on my trip I mought fin' a good cook ter holp Miss Judy out. Her maw am p'intedly 'posed ter n.i.g.g.e.r gals, but she ain't called on ter be. Me'n you knows by lookin' on with one eye that Mrs. Buck air mo'

hindrance than help ter Miss Judy. You ain't gonter put no bans on my goin' air you, Miss Ann? Looks like it ain't 'zactly grabby fer me ter git a holiday onct every fifty years."

"Well, if--" Miss Ann tried again.

"Ya.s.sum, I done filled all the wood boxes in the house an' on the po'ch. I done split up enough kindlin' ter las' a week. I done scrubbed the kitchen an' cleaned out the cow shed an' put fresh straw in Cupid and Puck's stalls. I done pick a tu'key fer Miss Judy an'

blacked the stove. I ain't lef nothin' undone, an' she ain't gonter have no trouble till ol' Billy gits back. I done already ax her what she thinks 'bout my goin' on a trip an' she say fer me ter git a move on me 'kase I needs it an' what's mo' she done rooted out'n the attic a top coat an' a pair er boots an' I'm a gonter go off dressed up as good as a corpse."

So Billy departed on his trip. When he had been gone four days and no message from him had come, Miss Ann was plainly a little uneasy about the old man.

"You ain't called on to be worried," said Mrs. Buck. "That old man can take care of himself all right. I must say I never expected the time to come when I'd confess to missing a darkey, but Uncle Billy is a heap of help around the place. He saves Judy a lot of work--things she never would let me do. I certainly hope nothing has happened to him."

Nothing had--at least nothing that his mistress or Mrs. Buck could have feared. When Judith went to the kitchen on Sunday morning, the one day she allowed herself to relax, she found the fire crackling in the stove and the kettle filled and ready to boil. Standing by the table, rolling out biscuit, was a small, old mulatto woman, wiry and erect. She was dressed in a stiff, purple calico dress and on her head was a bandanna handkerchief, the ends tied in front and standing up like rabbit ears.

Uncle Billy looked at Judith and grinned sheepishly. "Miss Judy, this air Mandy!"

"How do you do, Aunt Mandy? I am so glad you have come to help me. You have come for that, have you not?"

The old woman continued to roll the dough and cut out the biscuit with a brisk motion, at the same time looking keenly at Judith.