A House Party with the Tucker Twins Part 23

"No, Miss Page! Just let me talk to you. You see I feel so bad about Ellen because she ain't been back to see her folks. I didn't know she wanted to go, but it seems she did and didn't like to say so. I ought to have known about it. If I hadn't have been a numskull I would a-known.

I've been so happy just to be with her that I never thought she wasn't just as happy to be with me."

"Why, Mr. Miller, I am sure she was. Everybody is always saying how happy Mrs. Miller is. Only the other day I heard Sally Winn declare she never saw such a contented young married woman. Sally says lots of young married women are not happy; that it takes a long time for them to get used to husbands instead of sweethearts; but that your wife didn't have to do that because you seemed just like a sweetheart all the time."

"Did she say that,--did she truly? I wonder what made her think it."

"Something your wife told her, I reckon!"

"Oh, thank you! Thank you for that! She could have gone to her mother if I had known she wanted to."

"Of course she could, but maybe she did want to go to her mother and didn't want to leave you. I bet that was the reason she didn't tell you she wanted to see her mother. She knew you would insist upon her going, and then she would have had to leave you."

Now the poor anxious young man was smiling. He wiped his eyes and grasped my hand.

"You are powerful like Doc Allison, Miss Page. He knows how to cure a sick spirit just as well as a sick body, and you sure can comfort a fellow, too."

There was the creak of a screen door being hastily opened on the side porch of the farmhouse and an old colored woman came running out. Henry Miller jumped to his feet but could not go to meet her. Fear seemed to grip him. What news was she bringing?

"Ma.r.s.e Hinry, it's a boy! It's a boy!"

"A boy?"

"Ya.s.sir, a boy, an' jes' as peart as kin be, an' Miss Ellen----"

"Is she dead?"

"Daid! Law, chile, she is the livinges' thing you ever seed an' what's mo' she is a-axin' fer you jes' lak she can't stan' it a minute longer 'thout she see you. Baby cryin' fer you, too!" and sure enough we did hear a faint squeaky cry issuing from an upstairs room.

The newly-made parent sprinted to the house as though he were in a Marathon race, and the old colored woman and I looked at each other and wiped the tears off that would roll down our cheeks.

"Young paws allus is kinder pitable," she remarked, and then hastened back to her labors.

Father came out soon, his lean face beaming with smiles, his arm thrown around the shoulders of the ecstatic Henry. We were to stay to dinner at the farmhouse, much to the delight of the old colored cook. It was deemed a great privilege in the county to have Doc Allison stop for dinner.

"I done made a dumplin' fer Ma.r.s.e Hinry," she said, as we were sitting down to the hospitable board. "In stressful times men-folks mus' eat or they gits ter broodin' on they troubles, an' whin men-folks gits ter broodin' if'n they ain't full er victuals fo' yer know it they is full er liquor."

As Henry Miller was a most respectable, church-going young man this amused Father very much.

"That's so, Aunt Min, so you feed him up. He had better look out, anyhow, because before you know it that young man upstairs will be whipping him."

This delighted the negress, who chuckled with glee as she pa.s.sed the dumplings.

"I is glad it's a boy 'cep'n' they is been so many boys born here lately that this ol' n.i.g.g.e.r is beginning ter s'picion that these here battles I hear 'bout is goin' ter spread this-a-way. In war time all the gal babies is born boys."

"Oh, I hope not, Aunt Min," said Father gravely.

"Ya.s.sir! An' the snakes! I never seed the like of snakes this summer gone by. That means the debble is busy an' the debble is the father of war."

"True, true!" sighed the doctor. "Well, I hope it won't come to us until the youngster upstairs is able to help defend us."

While we were at dinner, Father was called up on the Millers' telephone.

Mrs. Reed, an old lady on the adjoining farm, was very ill and the doctor must leave his dumpling unfinished and fly to her. The colt was harnessed with the expedition used in a fire engine house and we were on our way in an incredibly short time.

CHAPTER XVII

MORE THINGS HAPPENING

THE Reeds were aristocrats of the first rank. There were no men in the family at all, no one but old Mrs. Reed, who had been a widow for at least forty years, and her two old maid daughters, Miss Elizabeth and Miss Margaret.

Weston was a beautiful place if somewhat gone to seed by reason of the impossibility of obtaining the necessary labor to keep it up. The house was a low rambling building, part brick and part frame, where rooms had been added on in days gone by when the family was waxing instead of waning, as was now the case.

Miss Elizabeth insisted upon my coming in the house although I longed to be allowed the privilege of exploring the garden, which I had remembered with great pleasure from former visits with my father. No matter if potatoes had to go unplanted and wheat uncut, the ladies of Weston had never permitted the flower garden to be neglected. I could see it from the window of the parlor through the half closed blinds. Cosmos and chrysanthemums were ma.s.sed in glowing clumps, holding their own in spite of a light frost we had had the night before. The monthly roses, huge bushes that looked as though they had been there for centuries, were blooming profusely.

Mrs. Reed was very, very low, so low that her daughters feared the worst. A door opened from the parlor into her bedroom, which the daughters spoke of always with a kind of reverence as "the chamber."

Through this door I could hear the low clear voice of the old lady as she greeted the doctor.

"How do you do, James? I am glad to see you once more."

"Yes, Mrs. Reed, I am more than glad of the privilege of seeing you. May I feel your pulse?" His tone was that of a man who requests to kiss one's hand.

"You may, James, but there is no use. I am quite easy now, but only a few moments ago my heart quite stopped beating. Each time I swing a little lower. Did I hear someone say you had little Page with you?"

"Yes, madame! She is in the parlor."

"I want to see the child."

I heard quite distinctly but I did not want to go in, shrinking instinctively from the ordeal of speaking to the old lady who was swinging so low.

Miss Elizabeth came for me. It seemed impossible to me that anyone could be older than Miss Elizabeth, who looked a hundred. She was in reality almost seventy. The mother was ninety but did not look any older than the daughter nor much more fragile. Miss Margaret was much more buxom than Miss Elizabeth and perhaps ten years younger. She was regarded by the two older ladies as nothing more than a child.

"Mother wants to see you," whispered the weeping Miss Elizabeth. Miss Elizabeth always did weep about everything. In fact, in the course of her threescore years and almost ten, so many tears had flowed down her cheeks that they had worn a little furrow from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth, where it made a neat little twist outward just in time to keep the salt water out of her mouth. These wrinkles in the poor lady's cheeks gave to her countenance a whimsical expression of laughter. The little twist at the end of the furrow was responsible for this.

I went as bidden and hoped no one knew how I hated it.

"Page, Mrs. Reed wants to see you a moment," said Father very gently.

"How do you do?" I whispered in such a wee voice that I felt as though someone away off had said it and not I. I knew that Mrs. Reed was deaf, too, and that I should have spoken in a loud tone.

"I'll be better soon, child," answered the old lady, who did not seem to be deaf at all. They say sometimes just before death that faculties become quite acute.

"How pretty you are, my dear, almost as pretty as your mother. I hope you appreciate what a good man your father is." Her voice was very low and I had to lean over to catch what she was saying. Her thin old hands were lying on the outside of the counterpane and they seemed to me to look already dead. I had never seen a dead person but I fancied that their hands must look just that way. I was deeply grateful to Fate that I did not have to take one of those hands.

"Yes; ma'am--I--believe I do. He is the best man in the world."

"He is so honest. Now he knows I am almost gone and he would not tell me a lie about it for anything,--would you, James?"