Judith of the Plains Part 18

"What kind of basques are they wearing this summer, Judy?" inquired Mrs.

Yellett, regarding her guest's trim shirt-waist judicially. "I reckon them loose, meal-sack things must be all the go since you and Miss Mary both have 'em; but give me a good, tight-fittin' basque, every time. How's any one to know whether you got a figure or not, in a thing that never hits you anywhere?" questioned the matriarch, not without a touch of pride anent her own fine proportions.

"You really ought to have a shirt-waist, Mrs. Yellett. You've no idea of the comfort of them, till you've worn them."

"I don't see but I'll have to come to it." Her tone was frankly regretful, as one who feels obliged to follow the behests of fashion, yet, in so doing, sacrifices a cherished ideal. Mary Carmichael choked over her coffee in an abortive attempt to restrain her audible hilarity. Judith, without a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt, was discussing materials, cut, and b.u.t.tons; the plainswoman had proved herself the better gentlewoman of the two.

"Get me a spotty calico, white, with a red dot, will you, the next time you're over to Ervay? b.u.t.tons accordin' to your judgment; but if you could get some white chiny with a red ring, I think they'd match it handsome."

She frowned reflectively. "You're sure one of them loose, hangy things 'd become me? Then you can bring it over Tuesday, when you come to the hunt."

"What hunt?" asked Judith, in all simplicity.

"Why, the wolf-hunt. Peter Hamilton come here three days ago and made arrangements for 'em all to have supper here after it was done. 'Lowed there was a young Eastern lady in the party, Miss Colebrooke, who couldn't wait to meet me. Course you're goin', Judy? You've plumb forgot it, or somethin' happened to the messenger. Who ever hyeard tell of anythin'

happenin' in this yere county 'thout you bein' the very axle of it?"

Judith had not betrayed her chagrin by the least change of countenance. To the most searching glance every faculty was intent on the shirt-waist with the ringed b.u.t.tons. Yet both women felt-by a species of telepathy wholly feminine-that Judith was deeply wounded. Loyal Sarah Yellett decided that Hamilton's guests would get but a scant supper from her if her friend Judith was to be unfavored with an invitation, while Judith, in her own warm heart, resented as deeply as Peter's slight of herself, his tale of Miss Colebrooke's impatience to meet Mrs. Yellett. The matriarch's dominant personality evoked many a smile even from those most deeply conscious of her worth; but it wasn't like Peter to make a spectacle of his ruggedly honest neighbor. Nevertheless she remarked, coolly:

"I sha'n't be able to bring your shirt-waist things up Tuesday, I'm afraid, Mrs. Yellett, but I'll try to bring them towards the end of the week." Then, with a swift change of subject, "How are the boys getting on with their education, Miss Carmichael?"

The boys looked at Mary out of the corners of their eyes. Their prowess in the field of letters had not been publicly discussed before. Mary Carmichael, emboldened by Judith's presence, looked at her tormentors with a judicious glance.

"The girls are doing fairly well," she replied, suppressing the mischief in her eyes, "but the boys, poor fellows, I think something must be the matter with them. Did they ever fall on their heads when they were babies, Mrs. Yellett?"

"Not more than common. All babies fall on their heads; it's as common as colic."

"Poor boys!" said Mary, with a manner that suggested they were miles away, rather than within a few feet of her. "Poor boys! I've never seen anything like it. They try so hard, too, yet they can make nothing of work that would be play for a child of three. They must have fallen on their heads harder than you supposed, Mrs. Yellett."

"Perhaps their skulls were a heap frailer than I allowed for at the time,"

said Mrs. Yellett, with similar remoteness, yet with a twinkle that showed Mary she understood the situation.

"An infant's skull doesn't stand much knocking about, I suppose, Mrs.

Yellett?"

"Not a great deal, if there ain't plenty of vinegar and brown paper handy, and I seldom had such fancy fixings in camp. It's too bad my boys should be dumb 'n account of a little thing like vinegar and brown paper."

"Maw, they be dumb as Injuns," declared Cacta, preening herself, while the Messrs. Yellett reapplied themselves to their dinner with ostentatious interest.

"Well, well!" said Mrs. Yellett; "it be a hard blow to me to know that my sons are lackings; there's mothers I know as would give vent to their disapp'inted ambition in ways I'd consider crool to the absent-minded. Now hearken, the whole outfit of you! Any offspring of mine now present and forever after holding his peace, who proves feebleminded by the end of the coming week, takes over all the work, labor, and ch.o.r.es of such offspring as demonstrates himself in full possession of his faculties, the matter to be reported on by the gov'ment."

No sovereign, issuing a proclamation of war, could have a.s.sumed a more formidable mien than Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie, crowned by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with bland, impa.s.sive expressions, noted the effect of the mandate. There was not the faintest symptom of rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the matriarch's edict without a murmur.

With an air of further meditation on the efficacy of brown paper and vinegar at the crucial moment, Mrs. Yellett suddenly observed:

"The lacking, like the dog, may be taught to fetch and carry a book; but to learn it he is unable."

"Maw, does it say that in the Book of Hiram?" asked Clematis.

"It says that, an' more, too. It says, 'The words of the wise are an expense, but the lovin' parent don't grudge 'em.'"

Mary Carmichael had noticed, as her alien presence came to be less of a check on Mrs. Yellett's natural medium of expression, that she was much addicted to a species of quotation with which she impartially adorned her conversation, pointed family morals, or administered an occasional reproof. These family aphorisms were sometimes semi-legal, sometimes semi-scriptural in turn of phrase, and built on a foundation of homely philosophy. They were ascribed to the "Book of Hiram" and never failed of salutary effect in the family circle. But the apt quotations that she had just heard piqued Mary's curiosity more than before.

"Do you happen to have a copy of the Book of Hiram, Mrs. Yellett?" she asked, in all innocence, supposing that the 'homely apothegms were to be found at the back of some patent-medicine almanac. Judith Rodney listened in wonder. The question had never before been asked in her hearing.

"I lost mine." Mrs. Yellett folded her arms and looked at her questioner with something of a challenging mien.

"What a pity! I've been so interested in the quotations I've heard you make from it."

"What's the matter with 'em?" she demanded, pride and apprehension equally commingled.

Judith Rodney rushed to the rescue:

"Nothing is the matter with them, Mrs. Yellett," she said, with her disarming smile, "except that there is not quite enough to go around."

The matriarch had the air of gathering herself together for something really worth while. Then she tossed off:

"''Tain't always the quality of the grub that confers the flavor, but sometimes the scarcity thereof.'"

Perhaps it has been the good-fortune of some of us to say a word of praise to an author, while unconscious of his relationship to the book praised.

Mark the genial glow radiating from every feature of our auditor! How we feel ourselves anointed with his approval, our good taste and critical faculty how commended! It is a luxury that goes a long way towards mitigating the discomfitures caused by the reverse of this unctuous blunder.

"The Book of Hiram," said Mrs. Yellett, angling for time, "is a book-it do surprise me that it escapes your notice back East. You ever heard tell of the Book of Mormon?"

Mary a.s.sented.

"Well, the Book of Hiram is like the Book of Mormon, only a heap more undefiled. The youngest child can read it without asking a single embarra.s.sing question of its elder, and the oldest sinner can read it without having any fleshly meditations intrudin' on his piety."

The Yellett family had by this time dispersed itself for the afternoon, and the matriarch and the two girls started in to clear away the meal and wash the dishes.

"That's the kind of book for me," continued Mrs. Yellett, vigorously swishing about in the soapy water. "Story-books don't count none with me these days. It's my opinion that things are snarled up a whole lot too much in real life without pestering over the anguish of print folks. Flesh and blood suffering goes without a groan of sympathy from the on-lookers, while novel characters wade to the neck in compa.s.sion. I've pondered on that a whole lot, seem' a heap of indifference to every-day calamity, and the way I a.s.say it is like this: print folks has terrible fanciful layouts given to their griefs and worriments by the authors of their being. The tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to their troubles is mighty attractive. Don't you reckon I'd be willin' to have a spell of trouble if I had a sweeping black velvet dress to do it in? Yes, indeed, I'd be willin' to turn a few of them shades of anguish, 'gray's ashes,' 'pale as death,' and so on, if they'd give me the dress novel ladies seems to have for them special occasions."

"But you used to like novels, you know you did, Mrs. Yellett," observed Judith Rodney.

"Yes, I didn't always entertain these views concernin' romance. You wouldn't believe it, but there was a time when I just nacherally went careerin' round enveloped in fantasies. I was young then-just about the time I married paw. Every novel that was read to me, I mean that I read"-Mrs. Yellett blushed a deep copper color through her many coats of tan-"convinced me that I was the heroine thereof. And, nacherally, I turned over to paw the feachers and characteristics of the hero in said book I happened to be enjoyin' at the time. Paw never knew it, but sometimes he was a dook, and it was plumb hard work. Just about as hard as ropin' a mountain-lion an' sayin', 'remember, you are a sheep from this time henceforth, and trim your action accordin'.' I'd say to paw, 'Let's walk together in the gloaming, here in this deserted garden'; and paw would say, 'Name o' Gawd, woman, have you lost your mind? It's plumb three hundred and fifty miles to the Tivoli beer-garden in Cheyenne, and it ain't deserted, either!'

"Then I'd wring my hands in anguish, same as the Lady Mary, an' paw would declare I was locoed. He seemed a heap more nacheral when I pretended he was 'Black Ranger, the Pirate King.' His language came in handy, and his cartridge-belt and pistol all came in Black Ranger's outfit. Yes, it was a heap easier playing he was a pirate than a dook. All this happened back to Salt Lake, where me an' paw was married."

Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range that separated her from the Mormon country, and her listeners realized that she was verging perilously close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded missing any detail of the chronicle that dealt with paw in the role of apocryphal duke, hastened to say:

"And you lost your taste for romance, finally?"

"In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there was reasons why I didn't mingle with the Mormon herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself with the fleetin'

figures of romance the endoorin' time and enjoys myself a heap. When paw wasn't a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like as not he was Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody ent.i.tled to the same amount of dog.

"'Bout this time a little stranger was due in our midst, and the woman who came to take care of me was plumb locoed over novels, same as me, only worse. She just hungered for 'em, same as if she had a longin' for something out of season. She brought a batch of them with her in her trunk, we borrowed her a lot more, some I don't know how she come by. But they didn't have no effect; it was like feedin' an' Injun-you couldn't strike bottom. She read out of 'em to me with disastrous results happenin', an' that cured me. The brand on this here book that effected my change of heart was _The Bride of the Tomb_. I forget the name of the girl in that romance, but she was in hard luck from the start. She couldn't head off the man pursooin' her, any way she turned. She'd wheel out of his way cl'ar across country, but he'd land thar fust an' wait for her, a smile on his satanine feachers.

"I got so wrought up along o' that book, an' worried as to the outcome, 'most as bad as the girl. Think of it! An' me with only three baby-shirts an' a flannel petticoat made at the time! Seemed 's if I couldn't hustle my meals fast enough, I just hankered so to know what was goin' to happen next! I plumb detested the man with the handsome feachers, same as the girl. Me an' her felt precisely alike about him. And when he shut her up in the family vault I just giv' up an' was took then an' there, an' me without so much as finishin' the flannel petticoat! I never could endure the sight of a novel since. Perhaps that's why Ben is so dumb about his books-just holds a nacheral grudge against 'em along of my havin' to borrow slips for him."

"Has the Book of Hiram anything to say against the habit of novel reading, Mrs. Yellett?" inquired Judith, demurely.