A Hoosier Chronicle Part 3

"It's not an escape," laughed Sylvia; "you see grandfather, being a professor, began teaching me almost before I began remembering."

"Oh! But even that would be better than a boarding-school, where they make you study. It would be easy to tell your grandfather that you didn't want to do things."

"I suppose it would," Sylvia acknowledged; "but it's so nice to have him for a teacher that I shouldn't know just how to do it."

This point of view did not interest Marian, and she recurred to her own affairs.

"I've been to Europe. Papa took us all last year. We went to Paris and London. It was fine."

"My grandfather was in the United States Navy, before he began teaching at Madison, so I know a good deal from him about Europe."

"Blackford--he's my brother--is going to Annapolis," said Marian, thus reminded of her brother's aspirations. "At least he says he is, though he used to talk about West Point. I hope he will go into the Army. I should like to visit West Point; it must be perfectly fascinating."

"I suppose it is. I think I should like college."

"Not for me!" exclaimed Marian. "I want to go to a convent in Paris. I know a girl right here in Indianapolis who did that, and it's perfectly fine and ever so romantic. To get into college you have to know algebra, don't you?"

"Yes; I think they require that," Sylvia replied, on guard against a display of too much knowledge.

"Do you know algebra?" demanded Marian.

"Sometimes I think I don't!"

"Well, there's no doubt about me! I'm sure I don't. It's perfectly horrid."

The entrance of Mrs. Owen and the return of Professor Kelton terminated these confidences. The four were soon at the luncheon table, where the array of crystal and silver seemed magnificent to Sylvia's unaccustomed eyes. She had supposed that luncheon meant some such simple meal as the suppers she had been used to at home; but it included fried chicken and cold ham, and there were several vegetables; and hot biscuits and hot corn bread; and it became necessary for Sylvia to decline an endless succession of preserves and jellies. For dessert there were the most fragrant red raspberries conceivable, with golden sponge cake. The colored man who served the table seemed to enjoy himself immensely. He condescended to make suggestions as he moved about. "A little mo' of the cold ham, Cap'n?" or, "I 'membah you like the sparrogra.s.s, Mis' Marian,"

he murmured. "The co'n bread's extra fine, Mis'"--to Sylvia. "The hossis is awdahed for three, Mis' Sally"--to Mrs. Owen.

"You still have Kentucky cooking, Sally," remarked Professor Kelton, who had praised the corn bread.

"I do, Andrew," replied the old lady; "everybody knows that the best things in Indiana came through Kentucky. That includes you and me!"

Prompted by Mrs. Owen's friendly questioning, Sylvia found herself talking. She felt that she was talking more than Marian; but she was much less troubled by this than by Marian's sophisticated manner of lifting her asparagus stalks with her fingers, while Sylvia resorted to the fork. But Sylvia comforted herself with the reflection that this was all in keeping with Marian Ba.s.sett's general superiority. Marian conducted herself with the most mature air, and she made it quite necessary for Professor Kelton to defend the Navy against her a.s.sertion that the Army was much more useful to the country. The unhurried meal pa.s.sed, and after they had returned to the drawing-room Marian left to meet her mother at the dressmaker's and return with her to Fraserville.

"I hope to see you again," said Marian, shaking hands with Sylvia.

"I hope so, too," Sylvia replied.

CHAPTER III

A SMALL DINNER AT MRS. OWEN'S

Professor Kelton announced that he had not finished his errands in town, and begged to be excused from the drive which Mrs. Owen had planned.

"Very well, Andrew. Then I shall take your Sylvia for a longer drive than I should expect you to survive. We'll go out and see how the wheat looks."

In this new environment Sylvia was aware that despite his efforts to appear gay her grandfather was not himself. She was quite sure that he had not expected to spend the afternoon downtown, and she wondered what was troubling him. The novelty of the drive, however, quickly won her to the best of spirits. Mrs. Owen appeared ready for this adventure with her tall figure wrapped in a linen "duster." Her hat was a practical affair of straw, unadorned save by a black ribbon. As she drew on her gloves in the _porte-cochere_ the old coachman held the heads of two horses that were hitched to a smart road wagon. When her gloves had been adjusted, Mrs. Owen surveyed the horses critically.

"Lift Pete's forefoot--the off one, Joe," she commanded, stepping down into the asphalt court. "Um,--that's just what I thought. That new blacksmith knows his business. That shoe's on straight. That other man never did know anything. All right, Sylvia."

Mrs. Owen explained as the trim sorrels stepped off smartly toward the north that they were Estabrook stock and that she had raised them herself on her Kentucky farm, which she declared Sylvia must visit some day. It was very pleasant to be driving in this way under a high blue sky, beside a woman whose ways and interests were so unusual. The spirited team held Mrs. Owen's attention, but she never allowed the conversation to flag. Several times as they crossed car lines it seemed to Sylvia that they missed being struck only by perilously narrow margins. When they reached the creek they paused on the bridge to allow the sorrels to rest, and Mrs. Owen indicated with her whip the line of the new boulevard and recounted the history of the region.

At the State Fair grounds Mrs. Owen drove in, explaining that she wanted to see what they were doing to the track. Sylvia noticed that the employees they pa.s.sed grinned at Mrs. Owen as though she were a familiar acquaintance, and the superintendent came up and discussed horses and the track changes with Mrs. Owen in a strange vocabulary. He listened respectfully to what Mrs. Owen said and was impressed, Sylvia thought, by her opinions. She referred to other tracks at Lexington and Louisville as though they were, of course, something that everybody knew about. The sun was hot, but Mrs. Owen did not seem to mind the heat a particle. The superintendent looked the sorrels over carefully; they had taken no end of ribbons at fairs and horse shows. Here was a team, Mrs.

Owen announced, that she was not afraid to show in Madison Square Garden against any compet.i.tors in its cla.s.s; and the superintendent admitted that the Estabrooks were a fine stock. He nodded and kept repeating "You're right," or "you're mighty right," to everything the old lady said. It seemed to Sylvia that n.o.body would be likely to question or gainsay any opinions Mrs. Owen might advance on the subject of horses.

She glanced over her shoulder as they were driving back toward the gate and saw the superintendent looking after them.

"He's watching the team, ain't he, Sylvia? I thought I'd touch up his envy a little. That man," continued Mrs. Owen, "really knows a horse from an elephant. He's been trying to buy this team; but he hasn't bid up high enough yet. It tickles me to think that some of those rich fellows down in New York will pay me a good price when I send 'em down there to the show. They need working; you can't do much with horses in town; the asphalt plays smash with their feet. There's a good stretch of pike out here and I'll show you what this team can do."

This promised demonstration was the least bit terrifying to Sylvia. Her knowledge of horses was the slightest, and in reading of horse races she had not imagined that there could be such a thrill in speeding along a stretch of good road behind a pair of registered roadsters, the flower of the Estabrook stock, driven by so intrepid and skillful a whip as Mrs. Sally Owen.

"I guess that mile would worry the boys some," observed Mrs. Owen with satisfaction as she brought the team to a walk.

This was wholly cryptic to Sylvia, but she was glad that Mrs. Owen was not disappointed. As they loitered in a long shady lane Mrs. Owen made it possible for Sylvia to talk of herself. Sally Owen was a wise woman, who was considered a little rough and peculiar by some of her townspeople, chiefly those later comers who did not understand the conditions of life that had made such a character possible; but none had ever questioned her kindness of heart. And in spite of her frank, direct way of speech she was not deficient in tact. Sally Owen had an active curiosity, but it was of the healthy sort that wastes no time on trifling matters. She was curious about Sylvia, for Sylvia was a little different from the young girls she knew. Quite naturally she was comparing the slim, dark-eyed girl at her side with Marian Ba.s.sett.

Marian was altogether obvious; whereas Mrs. Owen felt the barriers of reserve in Sylvia. Sylvia embodied questions in the Kelton family history that she could not answer, though she had known Andrew Kelton all his life, and remembered dimly his only daughter, who had unaccountably vanished.

"Where do you go to school, Sylvia?" she asked.

"I don't go to school,--not to a real school,--but grandfather teaches me; he has always taught me."

"And you are now about--how old?"

"Sixteen in October. I've been talking to grandfather about going to college."

"They do send girls to college nowadays, don't they! We're beginning to have some of these college women in our town here. I know some of 'em.

Let's see. What they say against colleges for women is that the girls who go there learn too much, so that men are afraid to marry 'em. I wonder how that is? But that's in favor of college, I think; don't you?"

Mrs. Owen answered her own question with a laugh; and having opened the subject she went on to disclose her opinions further.

"I guess I'm too old to be one of these new women we're hearing so much about. Even farming's got to be a science, and it keeps me hustling to learn what the new words mean in the agricultural papers. I belong to a generation of women who know how to sew rag carpets and make quilts and stir soft soap in an iron kettle and darn socks; and I can still cure a ham better than any Chicago factory does it," she added, raking a fly from the back of the "off" sorrel with a neat turn of the whip. "And I reckon I make 'em pay full price for my corn. Well, well; so you're headed for college."

"I hope so," said Sylvia; "then after that I'm going to teach."

"Poor pay and hard work. I know lots of teachers; they're always having nervous prostration. But you look healthy."

"Oh, I'm strong enough," replied Sylvia. "I think I should like teaching."

"Marian was at Miss Waring's school last winter and I couldn't see what she was interested in much but chasing to matinees. Are you crazy about theatres?"

"Why, I've never been to one," Sylvia confessed.

"You're just as well off. Actors ain't what they used to be. When you saw Edwin Booth in 'Hamlet' or Jefferson in 'Rip,' you saw acting. I haven't been in any theatre since I saw Jefferson in the 'Rivals' the last time he came round. There used to be a stock company at the Metropolitan about war-time that beat any of these new actor folks. I'd rather see a good circus any time than one of these singing pieces.

Sa.s.safras tea and a circus every spring; I always take both."

Sylvia found these views on the drama wholly edifying. Circuses and sa.s.safras tea were within the range of her experience, and finding that she had struck a point of contact, Mrs. Owen expressed her pity for any child that did not enjoy a round of sa.s.safras tea every spring.