The Road to Providence Part 11

"Mis' Mayberry," came in a doleful voice over the wall near the porch, and Mrs. Peavey's mournful face appeared, framed in the lilac bushes.

"I've just been reading the Tuesday Bolivar Herald, and Bettie Pratt's own first husband's sister-in-law's child died last week out in Californy, where she moved when she married the second time. I hate to tell Bettie and have the wedding stopped, but I feel it are my duty not to let her pay no disrespect to her Turner children by having a wedding with some of they law-kin in trouble."

"Well, Hettie Ann, I don't believe I'd tell her, for as bad as that would be on the Turner children, think how much the Pratts and Hoovers would lose in pleasure, so as they are the majority, it's only fair they should rule." Mother Mayberry had for a moment stood aghast at the idea of the misanthrope's descent upon happy Bettie with even this long distance shadow to cast across her joy, but dealing with her neighbor for years had sharpened her wits and she knew that a sense of fair play was one of Mrs. Peavey's redeeming traits that could always be counted upon.

"Yes, I reckon that are so," she answered grudgingly. "Then we'll have to keep the bad news to tell her when she gets back from the trip. Did you know that spangled Wyandotte hen have deserted all them little chickens and is a-laying again out in the weeds behind the barn? Told you them foreign poultry wasn't no good," with which she disappeared behind the top stone of the wall.

"Poor Spangles! she carried them chickens a week longer than could be expected and now don't get no credit for it," said Mother Mayberry, as the singer lady gave vent to the giggle she had been suppressing for a good many minutes. "Now run on, sweet child, and use them beguilements on Tom for me, while I go try to rub some liniment on Mis' Tutt's conscience. Fill up Martin Luther sometime soon, will you?"

And in accordance with directions, after a few minutes spent before Mother Mayberry's old-fashioned mirror in tucking three very perfect red-musk buds in the belt of her white linen gown, the singer lady descended upon the unwitting victim, in the north wing and began the machinations according to promise. Doctor Mayberry, unfortunately for him, showed extravagant signs of delight at the very sight of the enemy, for it was almost the first voluntary visit she had ever paid him, and thus he gave her the advantage to start with.

"You aren't busy, are you?" she asked as she glanced around the book-lined room and into the laboratory beyond. "This is only a semi-professional consultation. Could I stay just a few minutes?" and the lift of her dark lashes from her eyes was most effectively unfair.

As she spoke she settled herself in his chair, while he leaned against the table looking down upon her with a very shy delight in his gray eyes and a very decided color in his tan cheeks.

"As long as you will," he answered. "I never can prescribe from a hurried consultation. It always takes several hours for me to locate anything. I'm very slow, you know."

"Why, I rather thought you treated your patients with--with very little time spent in consultation," a remark which she, herself, knew to be a dastardly manoeuver. "You attended to Squire Tutt's trouble in a very few minutes, it seems," she hastened to add, as she glanced at a flask that lay on the corner of the table.

"The Squire's trouble is chronic, and simply calls for refilled prescriptions," he laughed, his generosity giving over the retort that was his due. "I somehow think this matter of yours will prove obscure and will call for time."

"It's a wedding dress I want you to prescribe for me," she hazarded a bit too hurriedly, for before she could catch up with her own words he had flashed her an answer.

"That depends!" was the victim's most skilful parry.

"Would you wear a white embroidery and lace or a rose batiste? A rose hat and parasol go with the batiste, but the white is perfectly delicious. You haven't seen either one, so I want you to choose by guess." Only the slightest rose signal in her cheeks showed that she had been p.r.i.c.ked by his quick thrust. She had taken one of the damask buds from her belt and was daintily nibbling at the folded leaves. Over it, her eyes dared him to follow up his advantage.

"I don't know--I'll have to think about it," he answered her, weakly capitulating, but still on guard. "If I choose one for to-day, when will you wear the other? Soon?" he bargained for his forbearance.

"Whenever you want me to if you'd like to see it," she answered with what he ought to have known was dangerous meekness. "What are you going to wear?" she asked, putting the direct question with disarming boldness.

"Blue serge Sunday-go-to-meetings," he answered carelessly, as if it were a matter to be dismissed with the statement. "Let's see--say them over again--white dress, pink parasol, rose hat, how did they go?"

"Once, not long ago, I was in your room with Mrs. Mayberry hunting for the kittens the yellow cat had hidden in the house, and I caught a glimpse of a most beautiful frock coat--it made me feel partyfied then, and I thought of the rose gown I have never worn and--and--" she paused to let that much sink in well. "I thought I would ask you," she ended in a pensive tone, as she kept her eyes fixed on the rose determinedly.

"You don't have to ask me things--just tell me!" he answered with an exquisite hint of something in his voice which he quickly controlled.

"The frock coat let it be--and shall we say the rose gown? Then the high G.o.ds protect Providence when it beholds!" he added with a laugh.

"Oh, will you really?" she asked, overwhelmed with the ease with which the battle had been won.

"I will," he answered, "only don't let Mother tease me, please!"

At which pathetically ingenuous demand the conquering singer lady tossed him the rose and laughed long and merrily.

"You and your Mother are perfect--" she was observing with delighted dimples, when Mother Mayberry herself stood in the doorway with well-concealed eagerness as to the outcome of the mission, in her face.

"Well," she observed with a laugh, "I'm glad to see somebody that has time to stand-around, set-around, pa.s.sing the news of the day. Did you all know that Bettie Pratt were a-going to get married in about two hours and a half?"

"We did," answered her son as he drew her a chair close to that of Miss Wingate. "We were just discussing in what garb we could best grace the occasion. Did you succeed in getting Mrs. Tutt to change her mind about honoring the festivities?"

"Oh, yes, she just wanted to be persuaded some. It's a mighty dried-up mind that can't leaf out in a change onct in a while, and it's mostly men folks that take a notion, then petrify to stone in it. But you all oughter see what is a-going on down the Road."

"What?" they both demanded of her at the same second.

"It's that 'Liza Pike again. Just as soon as that child hatches a idea, the whole town takes to helping her feather it out. She got Mis'

Bostick's bed moved to the front window, and then found that Nath Mosbey's fence kept her from seeing the Road where the procession are a-going into the Meeting-house yard. But that didn't down her none at all, for when I left she had Nath and Buck and Mr. Petway a-knocking down the two panels of fence, and leaving Mis' Bostick a clean sweep of view, Did you ever?" and mother Mayberry chuckled over the small sister's triumph over what to the rest of Providence would have seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

"It's just like her, the darling!" exclaimed the singer lady appreciatively.

"And she have got the Deacon all tucked out until he is a sight to behold. She have made Mis' Peavey starch his white tie until it sets out on both sides like cat whiskers, and have pinned a bokay on his coat 'most as big as the bride's. Then she have reached his forelock up on his head so he looks like Martin Luther, and she have got him a-settin' down, so as not to get out of gear none. Mis' Bostick is a-wearing a little white rose pinned on her night-gown, and they is honeysuckle trailed all over the bed. But here am I a-chavering with you all, with time a-flying and no chance of putting salt on her tail this day. Please, Tom Mayberry, go down to the store and buy a nickel's worth of starch, and it's none of your business how I want to use it.

I'm going to look a surprise for you myself, before sundown."

"Well, how did you get along with him, honeybird?" she asked eagerly, as they ascended the front steps together, while the Doctor strode down the Road on his errand.

"Beautifully!" exclaimed the singer lady with enthusiasm and the very faintest of blushes.

"I thought so from his looks," answered the beguiled young Doctor's wily mother. "A man always do have that satisfied martyr-smile when he thinks he are doing something just to please a woman. Now, honey-child, you ain't got nothing to do but frill out your own sweet self; and make a job of it while you are about it." With which command Mother Mayberry dismissed Miss Wingate up the stairs to her dormer-window room.

And it is safe to say that no two such teeming hours ever fleeted their seconds away on Providence Road as did those ensuing. The whole village buzzed and b.u.mbled and swarmed in and out from house to house like a colony of clover-drunken bees on an August afternoon. Laughter floated on the air and mingled with banter and song, while the aroma of flesh pots and fine spices drifted from huge waiters being hurriedly carried from down and up the Road and into the Pratt gate. The wedding supper was being laid on improvised tables in Bettie's side yard, with Judy Pike in command, seconded by Mrs. Peavey with her skirts tucked up out of possible harm and her mind on the outlook for any possible disaster, from the wilting of the jelly mold to a sad streak in the bride's cake, baked by the bride herself with perfectly happy confidence.

Then on the heels of the excitement came a quiet half-hour devoted to the completing of all toilets behind closed family doors. A shrill squeal issuing now and then from an open window told its tale of tortures being undergone, and a smothered masculine e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n added a like testimony.

At exactly a quarter to five, Miss Wingate issued from her room after a completely satisfactory seance with her mirror, and from the front steps looked down in dismay upon a scene of rebellion, that threatened at any moment to become one of riot.

On the gra.s.s beside the porch stood a group of little girls all starched, frilled, curled and beribboned until they resembled a large bouquet of cabbage roses themselves. Each one clasped carefully a gaily decorated basket filled with roses, and from each and every pair of eyes there danced sparks of rage, aimed at a huddled company of small boys who were returning their indignation by sullen scorn mixed with determination in their polished, freckled faces. Half way between each group stood Eliza Pike, a glorified Eliza, from a halo of curls to brand new small shoes. She had evidently been carrying on a losing series of negotiations, for her usually sanguine face had an expression of utter hopelessness, tinged with some of the others' feminine indignation.

"Miss Elinory," she exclaimed as the singer lady came to the edge of the porch, "I don't know what to make of the boys, they never did this way before!"

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Miss Wingate, something of Eliza's panic communicating itself to her own face and voice.

The boys all suddenly found interest in their own feet or the cracks in the pavement, so Eliza as usual became the spokesman for the occasion.

"They say they just won't carry baskets of flowers, because it makes them look silly like girls. They will march with us if you make 'em do it, but they won't carry no baskets for n.o.body. I don't want Mis' Pratt to find out how they is a-acting, for three of 'em are hers and five Hoovers, and it is they own wedding." Eliza's voice almost became a wail in which Miss Wingate felt inclined to join.

At this juncture, Martin Luther took it upon himself to create a further diversion and to add fuel to the flame. By a mistake, and through a determination to follow instructions, he had clung to little Bettie's hand, and when she picked up one of the tiny baskets provided for the two tots, so had he, and thus he found himself humiliatingly equipped and on the wrong side of the yard and question. Disengaging himself from the wide-eyed Bettie, he marched to the center of the middle ground and cast the despised basket upon the gra.s.s.

"No girl--BOY, thank ma'am, please!" he announced with a defiant glance at the singer lady up from under the rampant curl, and that he did not fail in his usual shibboleth of courtesy was due to his habitual use of it, rather than a desire to soften the effect of his announcement.

Miss Wingate sank down upon the steps in helpless dismay, and tears began to drop from Eliza's eyes, when Mother Mayberry appeared upon the scene of action, stiff and rustling as to black silk gown, capped with a cobweb of lace over the water-waves and most imposing as to mien.

"Now what's all these conniptions about?" she demanded, and eyed the boys with an expression of reserving judgment that did her credit, for a forlorn and surly sight they presented.

And again Eliza stated the case of the culprits in brief and not uncertain terms.

"Well, well," said Mother Mayberry, and a most delicious laugh fell on the overcharged air and in itself began to clear the atmosphere, "so you empty-handed, cross-faced boys think you look more stylisher for the wedding than the girls look, do you?"

"No'm, we never said that," answered young Bud with a grin coaxing at his wide mouth. "We just don't want to carry no baskets. Buck said he wouldn't, and Sam Mosbey said they had oughter tie a sash around the middle of all of us for a show. We think the girls look fine," and he cast an uneasy glance at his sister.

"Well, seeing as you came down as far as to pa.s.s a compliment on 'em, I reckon the girls will have to forgive you for talking about them that way. I am willing to ask Miss Elinory here to give you each a little bunch of roses to carry in your hand instead of a basket, and to let you walk along beside the girls, though n.o.body will look at you anyway or know you are there. Is that a bargain and is everybody ready to step into line?"

And almost instantly there was a relieved and amicable settling of the difficulties, a sorting of bunches from the despised baskets, and a quick line-up.