Amanda: A Daughter of the Mennonites Part 8

"By that time," said Uncle Amos, "they'll have flyin' machine hea.r.s.es; they'll go faster."

"My goodness, Amos, how you talk! Ain't you ashamed to make fun at your old sister that way! But Mom always said when you was little that you seemed a little simple, so I guess you can't help it."

"Na-ha," exulted Amanda, with impish delight. "That's one on you. Aunt Rebecca ain't so dumb like she lets on sometimes."

"Ach, no," Aunt Rebecca said, laughing. "'A blind pig sometimes finds an acorn, too.'"

Aunt Rebecca's table, though not lavishly laden as are those of most of the Pennsylvania Dutch, was amply filled with good, substantial food.

The fried sausage was browned just right, the potatoes and lima beans well-cooked, the cold slaw, with its dash of red peppers, was tasty and the snitz pie--Uncle Amos's favorite--was thick with cinnamon, its crust flaky and brown.

After the dishes were washed Aunt Rebecca said, "Now then, we'll go in the parlor."

"Oh, in the parlor!" exclaimed Amanda. "Why, abody'd think we was company. You don't often take us in the parlor."

"Ach, well, you won't make no dirt and I just thought to-day, once, I'd take you in the parlor to sit a while. It don't get used hardly. Wait till I open the shutters."

She led the way through a little hall to the front room. As she opened the door a musty odor came to the hall.

"It smells close," said Aunt Rebecca, sniffing. "But it'll be all right till I get some screens in." She pulled the ta.s.seled cords of the green shades, opened the slatted shutters, and a flood of summer light entered the room. "Ach," she said impatiently as she hammered at one window, "I can hardly get this one open still, it sticks itself so."

But after repeated thumps on the frame she succeeded in raising it and placing an old-fashioned sliding screen.

"Now sit down and take it good," she invited.

Uncle Amos sank into an old-fashioned rocker with high back and curved arms, built throughout for the solid comfort of its occupants. Mrs.

Reist chose an old hickory Windsor chair, Aunt Rebecca selected, with a sigh of relief, a fancy reed rocker, given in exchange for a book of trading stamps.

"This here's the best chair in the house and it didn't cost a cent,"

she announced as she rocked in it.

Amanda roamed around the room. "I ain't been in here for long. I want to look around a little. I like these dishes. I wish we had some like them." She tiptoed before a corner cupboard filled with antiques.

"Ach, yes," her aunt answered, "mebbe it looks funny, ain't, to have a gla.s.s cupboard in the parlor, but I had no other room for it, the house is so little. If I didn't think so much of them dishes I'd sold them a'ready. That little gla.s.s with the rim round the bottom of it I used to drink out of it at my granny's house when I was little. Them dark shiny dishes like copper were Jonas's mom's. And I like to keep the pewter, too, for abody can't buy it these days."

Amanda looked up. On the top shelf of the cupboard was a silver l.u.s.tre pitcher, a teapot of rose l.u.s.tre, a huge willow platter with its quaint blue design, several pewter bowls, a plate with a crude peac.o.c.k in bright colors--an array of antiques that would have awakened covetousness in the heart of a connoisseur.

A walnut pie-crust tilt top table stood in one corner of the room, a mahogany gateleg occupied the centre, its beauty largely concealed by a cover of yellow and white checked homespun linen, upon which rested a gla.s.s oil lamp with a green paper shade, a wide gla.s.s dish filled with pictures, an old leather-bound alb.u.m with heavy bra.s.s clasps and hinges. A rag carpet, covered in places with hooked rugs, added a proper note of harmony, while the old walnut chairs melted into the whole like trees in a woodland scene. The whitewashed walls were bare save for a large square mirror with a wide mahogany frame, a picture holder made from a palm leaf fan and a piece of blue velvet briar st.i.tched in yellow, and a cross-st.i.tch canvas sampler framed with a narrow braid of horsehair from the tail of a dead favorite of long ago.

"What's pewter made of, Aunt Rebecca?" asked the child.

"Why, of tin and lead. And it's a pity they don't make it and use lots of it like they used to long ago. For you can use pewter spoons in vinegar and they don't turn black like some of these things that look like silver but ain't. Pewter is good ware and I think sometimes that the people that lived when it was used so much were way ahead of the people to-day. Pewter's the same all through, no thin coatin' of something shiny that can wear off and spoil the spoons or dishes. It's old style now but it's good and pretty."

"Yes, that's so," agreed Amanda. It was surprising to the little girl that the acidulous old aunt could, so unexpectedly, utter beautiful, suggestive thoughts. Oh, Aunt Rebecca's house was a wonderful place.

She must see more of the treasures in the parlor.

Finally her activity annoyed Aunt Rebecca. "My goodness," came the command, "you sit down once! Here, look at the alb.u.m. Mebbe that will keep you quiet for a while."

Amanda sat on a low footstool and took the old alb.u.m on her knees. She uttered many delighted squeals of surprise and merriment as she turned the thick pages and looked at the pictures of several generations ago.

A little girl with ruffled pantalets showing below her full skirt and a fat little boy with full trousers reaching half-way between his knees and his shoetops sent Amanda into a gale of laughter. "Oh, I wish Phil was here. What funny people!"

"Let me see once," asked Aunt Rebecca. "Why, that's Amos and your mom."

Mrs. Reist smiled and Uncle Amos chuckled. "We're peaches there, ain't?

I guess if abody thinks back right you see there were as many crazy styles in olden times as there is now."

Tintypes of men and women in peculiar dress of Aunt Rebecca's youth called forth much comment and many questions from the interested Amanda. "Are there no pictures in here of you?" she asked her aunt.

"Yes, I guess so. On the last page or near there. That one," she said as the child found it, a tintype of a young man seated on a vine- covered seat and a comely young woman standing beside him, one hand laid upon his shoulder.

"And is that Uncle Jonas?"

"No--my goodness, no! That's Martin Landis."

"Martin Landis? Not my--not the Martin Landis's pop that lives near us?"

"Yes, that one."

"Why"--Amanda was wide-eyed and curious--"what were you doin' with your hand on his shoulder so and your picture taken with him?"

Aunt Rebecca laughed. "Ach, I had dare to do that for we was promised then, engaged they say now."

"You were goin' to marry Martin Landis's pop once?" The girl could not quite believe it.

"Yes. But he was poor and along came Jonas Miller and he was rich and I took him. But the money never done me no good. Mebbe abody shouldn't say it, since he's dead, but Jonas was stingy. He'd squeeze a dollar till the eagle'd holler. He made me pinch and save till I got so I didn't feel right when I spent money. Now, since he's gone, I don't know how. I act so dumb it makes me mad at myself sometimes. If I go to Lancaster and buy me a whole plate of ice-cream it kinda bothers me. I keep wonderin' what Jonas'd think, for he used to say that half a plate of cream's enough for any woman. But mebbe it was to be that I married Jonas instead of Martin Landis. Martin is a good man but all them children--my goodness! I guess I got it good alone in my little house long side of Mrs. Landis with all her children to take care of."

Amanda remembered the glory on the face of Mrs. Landis as she had said, "Abody can have lots of money and yet be poor and others can have hardly any money and yet be rich. It's all in what abody means by rich and what kind of treasures you set store by. I wouldn't change places with your rich Aunt Rebecca for all the farms in Lancaster County."

Poor Aunt Rebecca, she pitied her! Then she remembered the words of the memory gem they had a.n.a.lyzed in school last year, "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise." She could understand it now! So long as Aunt Rebecca didn't see what she missed it was all right. But if she ever woke up and really felt what her life might have been if she had married the poor man she loved--poor Aunt Rebecca! A halo of purest romance hung about the old woman as the child looked up at her.

"My goodness," the woman broke the spell, "it's funny how old pictures make abody think back. That old polonaise dress, now," she went on in reminiscent strain, "had the nicest b.u.t.tons on. I got some of 'em yet on my charm string."

"Charm string--what's a charm string?"

"Wait once. I'll show you."

The woman left the room. They heard her tramp about up-stairs and soon she returned with a long string of b.u.t.tons threaded closely together and forming a heavy cable.

"Oh, let me see! Ain't that nice!" exclaimed Amanda. "Where did you ever get so many b.u.t.tons and all different?"

"We used to beg them. When I was a girl everybody mostly had a charm string. I kept puttin' b.u.t.tons on mine till I was well up in my twenties, then the string was full and big so I stopped. I used to hang it over the looking gla.s.s in the parlor and everybody that came looked at it."

Amanda fingered the charm string interestedly. Antique b.u.t.tons, iridescent, golden, glimmering, some with carved flowers, others globules of colored gla.s.s, many of them with quaint filigree bra.s.s mounting over colored background, a few G. A. R. b.u.t.tons from old uniforms, speckled china ones like portions of bird eggs--all strung together and each one having a history to the little old eccentric woman who had cherished them through many years.

"This one Martin Landis give me for the string and this one is from Jonas' wedding jacket and this pretty blue gla.s.s one a girl gave me that's dead this long a'ready."

"Oh"--Amanda's eyes shone. She turned to her mother, "Did you ever have a charm string, Mom?"

"Yes. A pretty one. But I let you play with it when you were a baby and the string got broke and the b.u.t.tons put in the box or lost."

"Ach, but that spites me. I'd like to see it and have you tell where the b.u.t.tons come from. I like old things like that, I do."