Speed Nell
Molly Brown's Post-Graduate Days
“The Saxon word ‘lady’ means bread-giver, but I think that you and your mother have given it a new significance, and the dictionaries will have to add, ‘Dispenser of cabbage and buttermilk and dog-bread.’”
More wheels, and Aunt Mary and Lewis, with Ca’line much rumpled and asleep on the front seat, her shoes and stockings in her lap and her bare feet propped gracefully on the dashboard, had returned. Aunt Mary was much excited.
“What’s all dis doin’? Who was all dem niggers I seen a-streakin’ crost the fiel’s? Buck Jourdan, ain’t that you I see hidin’ behine that tree? I thought I hearn the farm bell as we roun’ed the Pint, but Lewis lowed ’twas over to Miss Sary Clay’s. Come here, Buck, an’ he’p me out’n dis here waggin. You needn’t think you kin hide from me, when I kin see the patch on yo’ pants made outen the selfsame goods I gib yo’ ma to make some waistes out’n, two years ago come next Febuway.” Buck came sheepishily forward to help his old aunt out of the vehicle. “Nex’ time you wan’ ter hide from me you’d better make out to grow a leettle leaner, or fin’ a tree what’s made out to grow some wider so’s you won’t stick out beyant it. What you been doing, and who’s been a-mashin’ down ole Miss’s grass, and what’s my little Miss Molly baby a-doin’ workin’ herself to death ag’in to-day?”
Buck endeavored to explain his appearance, and told the story of the strike at Mrs. Clay’s and how they were just passing through Mrs. Brown’s yard when she had come out and invited them all to dinner. His story was so plausible and his voice so soft and manner so wheedling, that Professor Green, who overheard the conversation, was much amused, and had he not already got the incident from Judy might have believed Buck, so convincing were his words and manner. Not so Aunt Mary, who had partly raised the worthless Buck and knew better than anyone how he could use his silver tongue to lie as well as tell the truth, but preferred the former method.
“Now, look here, you Buck Jourdan, you ain’t no count on Gawd’s green yearth ‘cep to play the banjo. What you been doin’ hirin’ yo’self out to Miss Sary Clay, jes’ like you ain’t never know’d that none of our fambly don’ never work fer none er hern? Yo’ ma befo’ you an’ yo’ gran’ma befo’ her done tried it. Meanin’ no disrespect to the rest er the Carmichaels, der’s the ole sayin’, ‘What kin you expec’ from a hog but a grunt?’ I knows ‘thout goin’ in my kitchen that Miss Molly done gib all you triflin’ niggers my pot er cabbage an’ the dog-bread I baked fer those houn’s an’ bird dogs what ain’t no mo’ count than you is, ‘cept’n they can’t play the banjo.”
“Buck Jourdan, is that you?” said Ernest, coming forward and interrupting Aunt Mary’s tirade. “I am going to get Miss Molly’s banjo and you can sit down and give us some music. I haven’t heard a good tune since I went West.”
Buck, glad to escape any farther tongue lashing from his relative, and always pleased to play and sing, tuned the banjo and began:
“‘Hi,’ said the ’possum as he shook the ‘simmon tree,
‘Golly,’ said the rabbit; ‘you shake ’em all on me.’
An’ they went in wif they claws, an’ they licked they li’l paws,
An’ they took whole heaps home to they maws.”
After several stanzas sung in a soft melodious voice, Buck, at Molly’s request, gave them, to a chanting recitative the following song, composed by a friend of Buck’s, and worthy to be incorporated in American folk-lore, so Professor Green laughingly assured Mrs. Brown.
THE MURDER OF THE RATTAN FAMILY
“One evening in September, in eighteen ninety-three,
Jim Stone committed a murder, as cruel as it could be.
’Twas on the Rattan family, while they were preparing for their bed.
Jim Stone, he rapped upon the door, complaining of his head.
The first was young Mrs. Rattan. She come to let him in.
He slew her with his corn knife – that’s where his crime begin.
The next was old Mrs. Rattan. Old soul was feeble and gray.
Truly she fought Jim Stone a battle till her strength it give way.
The next was the little baby. When he, Jim Stone did see,
He raised up in his cradle. ‘Oh! Jim Stone, don’t murder me!’
Next morning when he was arrested – wasn’t sure that he was the one.
Till only a few weeks later he confessed to the crime he done.
They took him to Southern Prison, which they thought was the
safetes’ place.
When they marched him out for trial, he had a smile upon his face.
And after he was sentenced, oh! how he did mourn and cry.
One day he received a letter, saying his daughter was bound to die.
Next morning he answered the letter and in it he did say,
‘Tell her I’ll meet her there in Heaven, on the sixteenth of Februway.’
They led him upon the scaffold with the black cap over his head.
And he hung there sixteen minutes ‘fore the doctors pronounced
him dead.
Now wouldn’t it have been much better if he’d stayed at home
with his wife,
Instead of keeping late hours, and taking that family’s life?”
CHAPTER VII. – PICTURES ON MEMORY’S WALL
The next week was a very quiet and peaceful one at Chatsworth. There had been so many excitements, with burglars and negro uprisings and what not, that Molly was afraid her visitors would think Kentucky deserved the meaning the Indians attached to it – “the dark and bloody battle-ground.”
Ernest, home for a vacation from his labors in the West, endeavored to keep Judy from missing the attentions of Kent, who was back at his grind in Louisville in the architect’s office, and did not get home each day until time for a late supper. Judy liked Ernest very well, as she did all of the Browns, but Kent and Molly were her favorites still, and the evenings were the best of all when Kent came home and, as he put it, “relieved Ernest.”
Molly found herself on easier terms with Professor Green than she had ever imagined possible. If he did not consider her quite an old lady, she at least was beginning to look upon him as not such a very old gentleman. He played what Kent designated as a “cracker-jack” game of tennis, and turned out to be as good a horseman as the Brown boys themselves.
“If he only had a little more hair on his forehead,” thought Molly, “he would look right young.”
Aunt Mary was the unconscious means of consoling her for his lack of hair. “Honey, I likes yo’ teacher mo’n any Yankee I ever seed. He’d oughter rub onions on his haid to stimilate the roots. Not but what he ain’t han’some, baldish haid an’ all, with them hones’ eyes an’ that upstandin’ look. I done took notice that brains don’ make the best sile to grow ha’r on an’ lots er smart folks is baldish. Mindjer, I wouldn’ go so fer as to say bald haided folks is all smart. It looks like some er them is so hard-haided the ha’r can’t break th’ough the scalp.”
Of course, the first day at Chatsworth he had to be taken out to view his possessions, the two acres of orchard land. It was a possession for any man to be proud of. It lay on the side of a gently sloping hill covered with blue grass and noble, venerable, twisted apple trees, that Molly said reminded her of fine old hands that showed hard, useful work.
“And these trees always have done good work. You know my father called these his lucky acres. He was always certain of an income from these apples. The trees have been taken care of and trimmed and not allowed to rot away as some of the old orchards around here have, Aunt Clay’s, for instance. She is so afraid of doing something modern that she refused to spray her trees when the country was full of San José scale, and in consequence lost her whole peach orchard and most of her apples. This is where our ‘castle’ used to be.”
They were in a grassy space near the middle of the orchard, where a stump of an old tree was still standing. The land, showing a beautiful soft contour, sloped to the worm fence at the foot of the hill, where the grass changed its green to a brighter hue and a beautiful little stream sparkled in the sun.
“All of us, even Sue, who is not given to such things, cried when in a big wind storm our beloved castle was twisted off of its roots. It was a tree made for children to play in, with low spreading branches and great crotches, the limbs all twisted and bent and one of them curving down so low you could sit in it and touch your feet to the ground. We had our regular apartments in that tree and kept our treasures in a hole too high up for thieves to have any suspicion of it. It was so shady and cool and breezy that on the hottest day we were comfortable and often had lunch here. We played every kind of game known to children and made up a lot more. ‘Swiss Family Robinson’ when they went to live up the tree was our best game. I remember once Kent gathered a lot of peach-tree gum and ruined my slippers trying to make rubber boots out of them as the father in Swiss Family Robinson did. Our castle had wonderful apples on it, too. They grew to an enormous size, and if any of them were ever allowed to get really ripe they turned pure gold and tasted – oh, how good they did taste.”
Edwin Green listened, enchanted at Molly’s description of her childhood and the beloved play-house. He half shut his eyes and tried to picture her as a little girl in a blue sun-bonnet – of course she must have had a blue bonnet – climbing nimbly up the old apple tree, entering as eagerly into the game of Swiss Family Robinson as she was now playing the game of life, even letting her best little slippers be gummed over to play the game true. He had a feeling of almost bitter regret that he hadn’t known Molly as a little girl. “She must have been such a bully little girl,” thought that highly educated teacher of English.
“Miss Molly, do you think that this would be the best place to build my bungalow? Place it right here where your castle stood? Maybe I could catch some of the breezes that you used to enjoy; and perhaps some of the happiness that you found here was spilled over and I might pick it up. It could not be so beautiful as your tree castle, but it is my ‘Castle in the Air.’ If I put it here I should not have to sacrifice any of the other trees; there is room enough where your old friend stood for my modest wants. Would it hurt your feelings to have me build a little house where your childish mansion stood?”
“Why, Professor Green, the idea of such a thing! It would give me the greatest happiness to have your bungalow right on this site. I would not be a dog in the manger about it, anyhow. Are you really and truly going to build?”
“I hope to. Of course, I shall have to ask your mother if she would mind having such a close neighbor.”
“Well, I hardly think mother would expect to sell a lot and then not let the purchaser build. She may have to sell some more of the place. I wish it could be that old stony strip over by Aunt Clay’s. You know our home, Chatsworth, is a Brown inheritance, and the Carmichael place adjoining belonged to mother’s people. They call it the Clay place now, but until grandfather died it was known as the Carmichael place. Aunt Clay married and lived there and somehow got hold of grandfather and made him appoint her administratrix and executrix to his estate. She managed things so well for herself that she got the house with everything in it and the improved, cleared land, giving mother acres and acres of poor land where even blackberries don’t flourish and the cows won’t graze. The sheep won’t drink the water, but they do condescend to keep down the weeds. I really believe that Aunt Clay is the only person in the world that I can’t like even a little bit. I fancy it is because she has been so mean to mother. I believe I could get over her being cross and critical with me, but somehow I can’t forgive the way she has always treated mother.”
“I found her a very trying companion at your sister’s wedding, and she looks as though she had brains, too. But how anyone with sense could be anything but kind to your mother I cannot see.”
Molly beamed with pleasure. “Ah, you see how wonderful mother is. I thought you would appreciate her. She likes you, too, Professor Green. Mother says she believes she understands boys better than girls and can enter into their feelings more.”
“Oh, what am I saying?” thought Molly. “I wonder what the Wellington girls would say if they could know I forgot and as good as called their Professor of English a boy! Well, he does look quite boyish out of doors, with his hat on.”
They strolled on down toward the brook, Molly patting each tree as they passed and telling some little incident of her childhood.
“I truly believe you love every one of these trees. You touch them as lovingly as you do President or the dogs, and look at them as fondly as you do at old Aunt Mary.”
“Indeed, I do; and, as for this little stream, it makes to me the sweetest music in the world.”
“Miss Molly, when I build my little bungalow, will you come and have lunch with me as you used to with your brothers in the old castle? I’ll promise you not to let you eat at the second table as you did when you took breakfast with me last Christmas.”
They both laughed at the thought of that morning; and Molly remembered that it was then that she had overheard Professor Green tell his housekeeper of his apple orchard out in Kentucky, and had realized for the first time that it was he who had bought the orchard at Chatsworth.
“Indeed, I will take lunch with you, and would like to cook it, too, as I did your breakfast that cold morning. Do you know, when you came downstairs and I peeped at you through the crack in the pantry door, you looked and sounded almost as fierce as the mob of colored men who came hungry from Aunt Clay’s last week? The nice breakfast I fixed for you seemed to soften your temper just as mother’s buttermilk did the darkies’. Aunt Mary says, ‘White men and black men is all the same on the inside, and all of them is Hungarians.’”
Edwin Green laughed, as he always did when Molly got on the subject of Aunt Mary. The old woman was a never failing source of wonder and amusement to him; and Molly mimicked her so well that you could almost see her short, fat figure with her head tied up in a bandanna handkerchief, vigorously nodding to punctuate each epigram.
“Next winter I hope to have my sister with me at Wellington, and she will see that this ‘Hungarian’ is fed better than my housekeeper has. You will come to us a great deal, I hope. I am overjoyed that you are to take the postgraduate course. That was the one pleasant thing your aunt, Mrs. Clay, had to tell me when I conversed with her at the wedding, and she little dreamed how pleasant it was, or I doubt her giving me that joy.”
“I am truly glad. I hated to give up right now. It seemed to me as though I could see the open door of culture but had not reached it, and had a lot of things to learn before I had any right to consider myself fit to pass through it. Mother and Kent together decided it must be managed for me. They are both bricks, anyhow.”
The young people had come to the little purling brook during this conversation, and at Molly’s instigation had turned down the stream and entered, through a break in the worm fence, a beautiful bit of woods. The beech woods in Kentucky are, when all is told, about the most beautiful woods in the world. No shade is so dense, no trees more noble, not even oaks. With the grace of an aspen and the dignity of an oak, the beech to my mind is first among trees.
“Of all the beautiful pictures
That hang on Memory’s wall,
Is one of a dim old forest
That seemeth the best of all.
“Not for the gnarled oaks olden,
Dark with the mistletoe,
Not for the violets golden
That sprinkle the vale below.
“Not for the milk-white lilies
Leaning o’er the hedge,
Coquetting all day with the sunbeams
And stealing their golden edge.”
Molly quoted the verses in her soft, clear voice, adding:
“I say ‘gnarled oaks olden’ for euphony, but I always think ‘beech.’ I don’t know what Miss Alice or Phœbe Gary, whichever one it was who wrote those lovely verses, would think of my taking such a liberty, even in my mind.”
“No doubt if Miss Alice or Phœbe Cary could have seen this wood, she would have searched about in her mind for a line to fit beeches and let oaks go hang. This is really a wonderful spot. Can’t we sit down a while? I hope your mother will let me have right of way through these woods when I build my nest in the orchard. This makes my lot more valuable than I thought. I have never seen such beech trees; why, in the East a beech is not such a wonderful tree! We have an occasional big one, but here are acres and acres of genuine first growth. You must love it here even more than in the orchard, don’t you?”
“Well, you see the orchard period is what might be known as my early manner; while the beech woods is my romantic era. I used to come here after I got old enough to roam around by myself, and a certain mystery and gloom I felt in the air would so fill my soul with rapture that (I know you think this is silly) I would sit right where we are sitting now and cry and cry just for the pure joy of having tears to shed, I suppose! I know of no other reason.”
Professor Green smiled, but his eyes had a mist in them as he looked at the young girl, little more than a child now, with her sweet, wistful expression, already looking back on her childhood as a thing of the past and her “romantic era” as though she had finished with it.
“Oh, Miss Molly, let’s stay in the ‘beech wood period’ forever! None of us can afford to give up romance or the dear delight of tears for tears’ sake. I love to think of you as a little child playing in the apple orchard, and as a beautiful girl wandering in the woods. But do you know, a still more beautiful picture comes to my inward eye, and that is an old Molly with white hair sitting where you are now, still in the ‘romantic era,’ still in the beech woods; and, God willing, I’ll be beside you, only,” he whimsically added, “I am afraid I’ll be bald-headed instead of white-haired!”
CHAPTER VIII. – ALL KINDS OF WEATHER
The days went dreamily on. Edwin Green lengthened his stay in Kentucky until he really became touchy on the subject, and one day when some one spoke of the old Virginia gentleman who came in out of the rain and stayed six years, he told Mrs. Brown that he felt very like that old man. She was hospitality itself, and made him understand that he was more than welcome, and, every time he set a date for his departure, some form of entertainment was immediately on foot where his presence seemed both desirable and necessary, and his going away was postponed again. Once it was a coon hunt with Ernest and John and Lewis, the colored gardener; once it was a moonlight picnic at a wonderful spot called Black Rock.
On that occasion they drove in a hay wagon over a road that was a disgrace to Kentucky, and then up a dry creek bed until they came to the great black boulder that stood at least twenty feet in the air; there they made their temporary camp. Kent confided to Professor Green that they never dared to come up that creek bed unless they were sure of clear weather, as it had been known to fill so quickly with a big rain that it drowned a man and horse. It was innocent enough then, with only a thin stream of water trickling along the rocks, sometimes forming a pool where the horses would go in almost to their knees; but, as a rule, they went dry shod along the bed. It was rough riding, but no one minded. There was plenty of hay in the wagon for young bones, and Mrs. Brown, who was chaperoning, had a pillow to sit on and one to lean against. When they got to the sylvan spot every one agreed it was worth the bumping they had undergone.
“Oh, it looks like the Doone Valley,” said Judy.
And so it did, except that the stream of water was not quite so big as the one John Ridd had to climb up.
There were sixteen in the party, which filled the big wagon comfortably so that no one had room to bounce out. Paul and Ernest had invited two girls from Louisville, who turned out to be very pleasant and attractive and in for a good time. The only person who was not very agreeable was John’s friend, the girl visiting Aunt Clay, a Miss Hunt from Tennessee. She was fussy and particular and afraid of spoiling her dress, a chiffon thing, entirely inappropriate for a hay ride. She complained of a headache, and, besides, as Molly said, “she didn’t sit fair.” That is a very important thing to do on a hay ride. One person doubling up or lolling can upset the comfort of a whole wagon load. You must sit with your feet stretched out, making what quilt makers call “the every other one pattern.”
“I am glad she acts this way,” whispered Mrs. Brown to Molly. “I know now why I can’t abide her. I couldn’t tell before.”
Miss Hunt’s selfishness did not seem to worry her admirers any. John was all devotion, as were the two other young men who came along in her train. They were sorry about her headache and wanted to make room in the wagon for her to lie down; but Mrs. Brown was firm there and said it was a pity for her to suffer, but she thought it might injure her back unless she sat up going over the rough road. That lady had no patience with the headache, and thought the girl would much better have stayed at home if she were too ill to sit up. She did not much believe in the headache, anyhow, and was irritated to see poor Molly with her long legs doubled up under her trying to make room for the lolling little beauty.
“She is pretty, no doubt of that,” said Edwin Green to Mrs. Brown, whom he had elected to sit by and look after for the ride, “as pretty as a brunette can be. I like a blonde as a rule. But it looks to me as though Miss Molly is getting the hot end of it, as far as comfort goes.”
He would have offered to change places with Molly, but had a big reason for refraining. That was that no other than Jimmy Lufton, Molly’s New York newspaper friend, was occupying the seat next to Molly, and Professor Green was determined to do nothing to show his misery at that young man’s proximity. Jimmy had arrived quite unexpectedly that afternoon and seemed to be as intimate with the whole Brown family in two hours as he, Edwin Green, was after weeks of close companionship. He tried not to feel bitter, and, next to sitting by Molly, he was sure he would rather sit by her mother than any one in the world, certainly than anyone in the wagon.
Jimmy was easily the life of the party. He had a good tenor voice and knew all the new songs “hot off of the bat” from New York. He told the funniest stories, and at the same time was so good-natured and kindly and modest withal that you had to like him. He was not the typical funny man. Edwin Green felt that he could not have stood Molly’s preferring a typical funny man to him. She did prefer Jimmy, he felt almost sure, and now he was trying to steel himself to take his medicine like a man. He was determined not to whine and not to make Molly unhappy. He had seen the meeting between Molly and Jimmy, and it was the flood of color that had suffused Molly’s face and her almost painful agitation that had convinced him of her regard for that brilliant young journalist. Had he heard the conversation as well as seen the meeting, he might have been spared some of his unhappiness. Jimmy had said, “Where’s my lemon?” and Molly had answered, “Done et up.”
They piled out of the wagon. John, the woodsman of the crowd, busied himself making a fire, demanding that the two “extra men” should come and chop wood, determined that they should not get in too many words with the beautiful Miss Hunt while he was working. Miss Hunt then exercised her fascinations on Jimmy Lufton, on whom she had had her eye ever since they left Chatsworth. Jimmy was polite, but had a “nothing-doing” expression which quite baffled the practiced flirt. Poor Molly’s foot had gone so fast asleep that she was forced to hop around for at least five minutes before she could get out of the wagon and begin to make herself useful. Kent, who had driven, with Judy on the front seat with him, was busy taking out the four horses to let them rest for the heavy pull home. The other young men were occupied in various ways, lifting the hampers out of the wagon and getting water from the beautiful spring at the foot of the huge black rock. Professor Green came to Molly’s assistance.
“I was afraid your foot would go to sleep. You are too good to let that girl crowd you so. She was the most deliberately selfish person I ever saw.”
“Oh, there is always somebody like that on a hay ride. I have never been on one yet that there wasn’t some girl along with a headache who took up more than her share of room. I am too long to double up; but it is all right now. The tingle has stopped, and I can bear my weight on it, I see.”
“Did you ever see anything more beautiful than this valley? How clever Miss Kean is in hitting off a description! I haven’t thought of the Doone Valley for years, and now I can’t get it out of my head; these overhanging cliffs and this green grass, green even by moonlight; and the sensation of being in an impenetrable fortress! And the great black rock might be Carver Doone petrified and very much magnified, left here forever for his sins. It must be a magnificent sight when the creek is full.”
“So it is; but I hope we shall not see that sight to-night. Lorna Doone in the big snow was in a safe place to what we would be in a big freshet up this valley with no way to get back but by the creek bed,” said Molly, jumping out of the hay wagon and beginning to make ready the supper.
Such a supper it was, with appetites to match after the long ride and good jolting! Mrs. Brown was an old hand at picnic suppers and knew exactly what to put in and how to pack the baskets in the most appetizing way. There were different kinds of sandwiches, thin bread and butter, all kinds of pickles, apple turnovers and cheese cakes; but the crowning success of one of these camp picnics was always the hot coffee and bacon cooked on John’s fire. The Browns kept a skillet and big coffee pot to use only on such occasions. The cloth was soon spread and the cold lunch arranged on it, and then in an incredibly short time the coffee was boiling and the bacon sizzling.
“Oh, what a smell is this?” said Jimmy Lufton, emerging from behind Black Rock, where Miss Hunt had been doing her best to captivate him. (Kent said he bet on Jimmy to give her as good as he got.) “Mark Twain says, ‘Bacon would improve the flavor of an angel,’ and so it would.”
“Well, I’m no angel, but I certainly do smell like bacon,” said Molly with flushed face and rumpled hair as she knelt over the fire with a long stick turning the luscious morsels. “Sue and Cyrus are responsible for the coffee and the bacon is my affair.”
“As Todger’s boy says, ‘Wittles is up,’” called Jimmy to the strolling couples, who lost no time in hurrying to the feast. Mrs. Brown was installed at the head of the cloth, but not allowed to wait on any one. “For once, you shall be a guest at your own table,” said Kent, taking the coffee pot out of her hands. “Miss Judy, don’t you think we can serve this?”
“Mostly cream for me and very little coffee,” drawled Miss Hunt.
“If you have such a bad headache you had better take it black,” said Judy, who was aware of that young lady’s selfish behavior on the trip. “The people who want a great deal of cream will have to wait until the rest are served, as some of the cream got spilled; and, while there is enough for reasonable helps, there is not enough for exorbitant demands.”
John and the two “extras” offered their shares to the spoiled beauty, but Judy was adamant.
“Those sandwiches with olives and mayonnaise are very rich for any one with a liver,” said Judy later on as Miss Hunt was preparing to help herself plentifully to the delectable food; “these plain bread-and-butter ones would be much more wholesome for you, my dear. What, cheese cakes for any one who is too ill to sit up straight! Goodness gracious, Miss Hunt, do be careful! Your demise would grieve so many it is really selfish of you not to take better care of yourself.”
“You seem to be very much concerned about my health, Miss Kean. I wonder that you knew I did not feel well; you seemed to be fully occupied on the journey with Mr. Kent Brown,” snapped Miss Hunt.
“So I was,” answered Judy, nothing daunted. “But whenever Kent had to turn his attentions to the four horses when we came to rough spots in the road and he was trying not to jolt the ambulance too much, then I could turn around and get a good bird’s-eye view of the passengers, and you always seemed to be on the point of fainting.”
“I know you are better now,” said Molly, who could not bear for even Miss Hunt, who was certainly not her style of girl, to be teased. “I know these apple turnovers won’t hurt you, and Aunt Mary makes such good ones. Do have one, and here is some more cream if you want it in your coffee.”
“What a sweet girl your sister is,” said Miss Hunt in an audible whisper. “I can’t see what she finds in that Miss Kean to want her to make her such an interminable visit.”
The ill-natured remark was heard by every one. For did you ever notice that the way to make yourself heard in a crowd of noisy talkers is to whisper? Molly looked ready for tears, and Kent bit his lips in rage, but Judy, as spunky as usual, and feeling that she deserved a rebuke from Miss Hunt, but rather shocked at the ill-bred way of delivering it, spoke out: “Mrs. Brown, when we were laughing the other day over your story of the old Virginia gentleman who came in out of the rain and stayed six years, I had another one to tell, but something happened to interrupt me. Might I tell it now?”
Mrs. Brown gave a smiling consent. She was not so tender-hearted as Molly and, while she felt it a mistake to wrangle, she was rather curious to see who would get ahead in this trial of wits.
“I bet my bottom dollar on Miss Judy, don’t you, mother?” said Kent in an undertone.
“I certainly do,” whispered his mother.
“A little Southern girl we knew at college, Madeline Pettit, told in all seriousness about a neighbor of hers who was invited to go on a visit. She accepted, but they had to sell the cow for her to go on, and then she had to prolong her visit for the calf to get big enough for her to come home on. I am afraid our calf is almost big enough and papa may come riding in on it any day and carry me off.” There was a general roar of laughter, and then the picnickers, having eaten all that they uncomfortably could, made a general movement toward adjournment.
