Back at School with the Tucker Twins Part 19

Our coming was a great surprise to her. Any pleasure that happened to come her way always took her unawares. She was certainly one of the Mrs. Gummidges of this world and was "a poor lone lorn critter" if I ever saw one. She was a grateful soul and was profuse in her thanks for the gifts. I had never seen her more enthusiastic although Father and I had never missed a Christmas in giving her some nice present. I verily believe it was the festive wrappings that appealed to her.

Of course Mr. Tucker took her by storm. He acted Santa Claus just as he had at Aunt Keziah's and Sally, I know, regretted that her education kept her from joining ranks with the believers.

"Did you ever see anybody look so like himself? I have never seen a Santa Claus before that did not have on an ugly false face--hideous painted things that wouldn't fool a chicken," Sally began with her accustomed volubility. "I can't quite make up my mind that you are not Santy--"

"Well, don't make up your mind to any such treason. I am Santy!"

"Well, Santy or not, I am mighty glad to see all of you. Now you must try some of my eggnog and fruit cake. Dr. Allison says my fruit cake is the best he ever tasted and that it is so well mixed that it is as digestible as sponge cake. My eggnog, too, can't be beat,--made of pure cream and eggs that are so fresh they were warm when I broke them. I waited for those finest Dominickers to get off their nests before I made it. 'Tain't strong of liquor and won't hurt a baby. Jo, bring my best Bohemian gla.s.ses. You'll find them on the tray in the dining room all set out on the sideboard. Here's my cake and I am proud to cut it for such company.

"Dr. Allison says he likes the looks of my cake. He says it looks like chewing tobacco, it is so nice and black and fruity, and that it tastes better than it looks. You can't trust all cooks with their fruit cake because it is so dark-like that dirt don't show in it and sometimes things that don't belong there get in it. I remember one time over at Mrs. Purdy's (of course I don't mean to be gossiping about her now that she is dead and gone)--but she cut a cake with all the airs and graces of a good cake-maker, which she never was, and what should I find in my piece--just one piece, mind you--but a shoe b.u.t.ton and a bent pin. I just thought to myself: 'Well, if that's what I found, G.o.d in Heaven knows what I didn't find.' Now there ain't a thing in my cake but the best ingredients, and I'll wager n.o.body will ever find anything in my cooking foreign to the human digestion."

We were certain of it, but Sally did not give us time to express our confidence. She plunged into a stream of eloquence concerning her Dominickers and their superior brand of eggs, as she ladled out the eggnog as smooth as a baby's cheek and as fluffy as a summer cloud.

"There are some that hold that a white Leghorn's eggs are more delicate than any other kind, but I say there is a richness about an old-fashioned Dominicker's eggs that nothing can come up to. What do you want with an egg being too delicate, anyhow? Of course, for Angel's Food they might be best, but I have never seen anything that an egg laid by a Leghorn will do that a Dominicker's won't do just as well. Of course n.o.body wants a duck egg or a goose egg for anything short of ginger bread,--they are coa.r.s.e! Now a hard boiled guinea egg is my favourite of all eggs. I think a nice hot guinea egg, boiled until it is mealy--it takes a good half hour--and then mashed up with good batter bread made of the fresh meal, ground over at Macy's mill, provided the batter bread is made the right way,--none of your batter bread raised with baking powders, but my kind, raised with eggs and plenty of them, well beaten and baked quickly,--I do say that there is no breakfast better."

The strangest thing about Sally Winn was that she longed for company, not for the good she might get out of it but just so she could pour forth her soul in conversation. We might just as well have been dumb for all she got from us, but all the time we were eating her truly wonderful cake and drinking her eggnog that even she could not praise according to its deserts, she regaled us with a stream of conversation that made our heads swim.

"I understand poor Jo better now," whispered Dee to me. "How can he ever talk? No wonder! He gets out of the habit at home and can't get in it when he goes away."

"Tell Mammy Susan I have got a good starting of rose geranium for her. I would have sent it over by Jo this morning but I was so afraid it might be too cold for it. It looks like Mammy Susan has all the luck with citronella and I have luck with rose geranium. My bush is so big it looks like I'll have to get Jo's watering tub from the barn to plant it in. It has long out-grown its pot. I certainly do like to have plenty of healthy rose geranium on hand when I make apple jelly. Nothing gives it the flavour that a leaf of rose geranium will,--just pour the boiling jelly over a leaf--one to each gla.s.s."

"That sounds fine!" exclaimed Santa Claus. "I don't think I ever tasted it."

"Wait a minute! I am going to fix one up for you to take back to Richmond and next summer when I make my jelly, I'll make some for you.

It comes in mighty handy for sudden company." Sally bustled off and came back bearing a tumbler of jelly that would have taken a prize at any fair in the world, I feel sure.

"Here it is!" she panted. "Jo is that fond of it that I sometimes hate to think of leaving him because I don't know who will ever make it to suit him."

"But are you thinking of leaving him?" questioned Mr. Tucker.

"Dying! I mean dying!"

"Oh, but you look so well!"

"I think so, too, Sally," I ventured. "You are getting to be right fat."

"Ah, my dear, that has nothing to do with health. The fatter I get the more of me there is to feel bad. I won't be long for this world, I am thankful to say. Fat! Why, I have seen many a fat corpse--more fat ones than lean ones." We could not gainsay such gruesome statistics, but I told her that Father had sent her a prescription that she must take immediately without fail.

"And give up the pink medicine?"

"He says you won't need that for to-day, that is, if you take the other.

Father says you are to bundle up and come over to Bracken for dinner. Jo and Mr. Kent are to come, too, of course, and that will mean that you will have no household cares. He says you must come. It is the doctor's orders."

"Well, if I must, I must!" she sighed. "I have great faith in Dr.

Allison and am sure he would not prescribe something that would hurt me," and so Sally, with many layers of wraps enveloping her already portly person, and, clasping in her arms the rose geranium for Mammy Susan, was bundled into Jo's already overflowing sleigh and we merrily started off for Bracken.

A very funny thing happened on the way, at least it turned out to be funny although it might have been very serious. Dee, who was on the front seat between Wink and Jo, insisted upon driving. Sally, on the back seat with Dum and Mr. Kent, was so wrapped up that she was oblivious to the speed that the two spirited horses were making. Of course Peg was ready for a race and so were all of us and race we did for most of the trip home. Jo's horses were young and good trotters and Dee, with blazing eyes and glowing cheeks, let them go as fast as they wanted to. My old Peg had seen better days as a racer but had the advantage of a cutter and a small load and so made the best of it. I hugged the road and kept it, while Zebedee hurled defiance at our pursuers.

About an eighth of a mile before the public road turned into the avenue at Bracken, Dee saw a chance to catch up with us and pa.s.s us. There was a smooth, unbroken stretch of snow that she thought was part of the road and she swerved her team to cut through it and get in the lead--but snow, like Charity, covers a mult.i.tude of sins. This pure mantle covered a great gully. The snow had drifted to that side of the road and the gully was filled and then neatly smoothed over. There was nothing to warn a person unacquainted with the road. Jo was evidently so taken up with Dee's glowing countenance that he was paying no attention to where she was taking them, when over they went as quietly and peacefully as turning over in bed.

The horses were wonderful. They stopped stock-still. The near one was dragged over by the weight of the sleigh but he lay quite still. Peg behaved like the almost thoroughbred she is and not only stood quietly but gave a ringing neigh of encouragement to the other horses.

Zebedee and I were out in a jiffy and running to the a.s.sistance of the turnover. I deemed it wiser for me to attend to the horses. If they had struggled, it might have been quite serious. I loosened the traces on the one who had been able to keep his feet, and then the fallen one, and as soon as I had accomplished that, I caught hold of the bridle and got him up in no time. He was not hurt at all. Zebedee was digging out the crowd, who had, one and all, taken headers. A waving sea of legs presented itself to our astonished gaze. One by one they scrambled out, all looking more or less sheepish but all rosy and ready to laugh if they could just be rea.s.sured that no one was hurt.

"Jo! Jo! Pull me out! The grey legs are mine!" came in m.u.f.fled tones from the deepest part of the drift where two fat legs encased in homemade grey woolen stockings were wildly beating the air.

"Sally!" we cried, and in a moment we had her out.

"Oh, Lord!" I groaned. "Poor Father and more pink medicine!" but not a bit of it! Sally was as game as the rest of them, and came up smiling and happy when she, too, found no one was hurt. The snow was as dry as powder and shook off them like so much flour. The sleigh was righted in short order and they all clambered back. Dee penitently handed the reins to Jo.

"I am not to be trusted. You had better drive."

"Not at all! No one could have told that was not perfectly good road. I should have been looking at the road instead of--ahem--ahem--instead of--instead--of--that buzzard, sailing down there," pointing to one of the denizens of the air who had made his appearance in the sky almost as though he had expected some pickings from our turnover.

"Humph! Buzzard, indeed!" grunted Sally. "If I was Miss Dee I shouldn't thank you to be a calling me a buzzard." Which went to show that Sally was not so much wrapped up that she could not see what was right in front of her.

What a dinner we did have! Tweedles and I often spoke of it when we were back at school, especially on the veal pot-pie days. The table was resplendent with its fine old damask and silver and with its load of good things.

"That there gobbler," said Mammy Susan, pointing with pride at the king of the feast sitting on his parsley throne, "don't weigh a ounce less 'n twenty pounds. He was the greediest one of the whole flock an' now see what he done come to! He was always the struttinest fowl and looks lak he is still some pompous with his bosom chuck full of chestnuts."

Blanche and Bill were to wait on the table, but Mammy Susan had to come into the dining room to see that everything went off in proper style.

She stood back like a head waiter in some fine restaurant and directed her minions with the airs of a despot.

"Pa.s.s that ther macaroni to Miss Dum!" would come in a sibilant whisper.

And then as Bill would prance by the old woman with all of the style he had learned on the Mississippi steamboat, she would say in stern undertones: "Don't wait fer folks to lick they plates befo' you gib um a sicond help."

"Blanche, gib Miss Sally Winn some 'scalloped oyschters, and there is Mr. Tucker 'thout a livin' thing on his plate."

Eating was not the only thing we did at that feast. We talked and laughed and cracked jokes until poor Sally Winn forgot all about dying and I think realized there was something in life, after all. What we had for that Christmas dinner was no doubt what every family in the United States who could have it was having, but it seemed to us to be better, and I believe it was. Mammy Susan had a witch's wand to stir things with and whatever she touched was perfect. Her cranberry sauce always jelled; her candied sweet potatoes were only equalled by marrons glace, so Zebedee said. The cheese on her macaroni always browned just right; and her mashed potatoes always looked like banks of snowy clouds. She seemed to have the power of glorifying egg plant and salsify so that persons often asked what the delicious thing was they were eating.

"Whew!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Zebedee, "I am certainly glad I did not have to eat in my embonpoint. I would have touched the table long ago and would have had to stop. As it is, I can still eat about three inches without having a collision."

Our day pa.s.sed in feasting and merry making. The walls of Bracken rang with merriment. Even Father came out of his book and got quite gay.

Sally Winn forgot to hold her heart and laughed like a girl at the jests.

"It will be fatal to sit down after such a dinner," declared Dee. "We had better go out and coast and jolt it down."

There was only one small sled, left from my childhood, but the attic was full of broken chairs, and in a few minutes the eager males had fashioned make-shift coasters out of old rockers and chair backs.

"They are not very elegant but they will slide down the hill, which is the main thing," said Wink, as he lay flat on his stomach and whizzed down the long hill to the spring.

We had a chair back apiece and so did not have to wait turns nor did we have to go double. I must say I like to coast by myself and guide my own sled. The impromptu sleds were not so very strong and it was much safer not to overload. We coasted until the long hill was as slick as gla.s.s and, with the exception of an occasional turnover, there were no casualties.

Father and Sally Winn watched us from the library window but after a while they came out, Sally bundled up to within an inch of her life, and what should they do but mount some chair backs and get in the game. Jo Winn fell off his sled when he saw his invalid sister, who only the night before had been on the point of shuffling off this mortal coil, actually straddling a chair back and taking the hill like a native of Switzerland.

"This is a new prescription I have given Sally," whispered Father to Jo.

"She is to coast every day as long as the snow lasts, and after it melts we are to think of some other form of exercise for her."