When Grandmamma Was New Part 12

"Mother! I have made one sausage do for eight buckwheat cakes. Wasn't that economical?"

Even Cousin Molly Belle laughed, the "aside" being more audible than I meant to have it. True, she hugged me the next minute, her chair being next to mine on the other side, but her eyes were lively with amus.e.m.e.nt, and I saw that she was ready to break out again.

My poor dainty mother actually blushed. It was not fashionable then for ladies, and little girls who were going to be ladies, to have hearty appet.i.tes. School-girls were instructed that no well-bred young lady ever ate more than two biscuits at breakfast or supper, and one was more refined than two. The pinion of a partridge sufficed the Lydia Languish of that day for the meat course of a dinner, and to be hungry was to be coa.r.s.e. My mother was a sensible matron who did not lean to extreme views on any subject, but she did not rise superior to a mortification such as this. When she said distressfully:--

"Molly! Eight cakes! I am ashamed that you should be so greedy!" I comprehended that my offence was rank, and that not her taste alone, but her sensibilities, suffered.

I got hot all over, as was my custom when self-convicted of sin, and sat abashed, appet.i.te and spirits put to flight together.

My father pulled his face straight.

"Never mind this time, mother! Better pay meat bills than doctor's bills. And, on a cold day, a restless little body like hers needs a great deal of carbon to keep the fires going. Eight buckwheat cakes and a thumping big sausage represent just so much animal heat."

By and by, when I got a chance to speak to him alone, I asked him what carbon was, and what he meant by the fires and animal heat. He was at work at his table in "the office" in the yard, the Mortons having gone home, but he put down his pen and talked to me for quite a while upon nutrition and food values. He did not use those terms. They had not come into vogue even with medical men and writers upon anatomy. Still, his simple lecture made me comprehend that what I ate kept me alive and warm and active, and how certain kinds of food made blood, and others, muscle, and others were of little or no use in keeping up animal heat, without which there could be no life.

I asked him if we could keep a dead thing warm if it would come to life again. I was thinking of all my dead pets. It was pathetic,--the familiarity of a seven-year-old with death and dissolution,--but of this I was not aware.

He answered very gravely:--

"We cannot keep dead things warm, daughter. When animal heat goes, life goes."

"And when animal heat comes, does life come?" I queried. "Is that what makes things alive?"

"Yes, dear. I have not time to explain it to you now. I am very busy.

Some other time we will talk more about it."

I carried a spandy new idea, and a stirring, into the garden with me at noon, as a chicken runs away to a corner with a crumb. The sun shone brightly, and I easily kept comfortable by skipping up and down a long walk, bordered on the northern side by an arbor-vitae hedge. I did not know that resinous evergreens really give out warmth, but I had found out, for myself, that this was the warmest nook of the grounds in winter, and haunted it exceedingly.

"When animal heat comes, life comes," I repeated aloud, in dancing along.

The sentence sounded important, and pleased my ears. Presently, I would set about getting all the meaning I could extract from it, and experiment upon my acquisition. All my mental currency went into active circulation.

An odd-looking thing lay in the middle of the path, that was not there when I came down awhile ago. I thought, at the first glance, that it was a hedgehog. I had seen pictures of the animal, and knew that when hunted so closely that it cannot escape it rolls itself into a p.r.i.c.kly ball.

This queer object was an oblong roll, about six inches in length and two inches thick, and covered with very coa.r.s.e brown fur or wool. I picked it up. It was very cold. Then it could not be alive. It was light as a puffball. Then it was empty. For the rest it was a puzzle. I ran with it to Mam' Chloe, who was getting Bud to sleep in my mother's chamber.

She cast a look at my "find," and sniffed impatiently.

"Always huntin' and foolin' long some trash or nuther! Fetchin' er ole dade sunflower in ter show me when I'm doin' my bes' ter git this blessed sugar-plum pie to sleep so's I ken git to my mendin'. Go 'long, Miss Molly!"

I was used to her moods, clement and adverse, and I stood my ground.

"Are you _sure_ it's a sunflower, mammy?"

"What you take me fur, chile? Don' I know a sunflower that's run ter seed las' summer, an' is empty an' dade as Furious [Pharaoh] now? I got no time to steddy 'bout sech foolishness."

I walked off,--not crestfallen, but blithe. One word had shunted my ideas upon a new track. She called this nondescript--which might, or might not, be the dried and warped disk of a sunflower that had cast its seeds--"dead." What should hinder me from making it alive? It looked like a hedgehog, or some other animal. It _should_ be an animal! Food of the right kind, and plenty of heat, were all it needed.

"Carbon and animal heat!" uttered I, consequentially, swelling with the prospective joy of creation.

Already I foresaw, in imagination, the tremor of the coming breath running through the uncouth body that would then put out, from mysterious hiding-places, head and limbs and tail, as buds unfold into flowers. I would confide to n.o.body what I was going to undertake. But I would do it! I would keep up animal heat, hour after hour, day after day, until my--Creature--breathed and moved and grew!

Without delay I hied me to the kitchen, and begged a cold sausage and a pone of corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta. She made no objection beyond asking why I "wanted sa.s.sage 'n' corn-bread in de middle o' de mawnin', 'stead o' piece o' cake, or somethin' sweet."

"Because the weather is so cold," I replied briefly, and got what I wished with a grunt of "Dat's so, honey!" Negroes are const.i.tutionally averse to winter and cold, and recognize, without knowing why, the carboniferous properties of pork and pone. I bore my treasures off to the dining room, shut the door, and began my experiment in the hottest flare of the fireshine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOLLY'S EXPERIMENT.

"I hied me to the kitchen and begged a cold sausage and a pone of corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta."]

The sunflower disk was a curiosity to me. It had curled inward upon itself, leaving a considerable cavity within. I stuffed this with the bread and sausage, crumbled fine, ruminating, the while, upon the probability that the sausage and cakes I had devoured presented the like appearance by the time they reached my stomach. When the variegated and viscid compound was tucked away, I wound a soft string about the disk to keep it in shape, and enveloped it, first in raw cotton, then in a bit of red flannel. In my uncertainty as to which end would bourgeon into a head, and from which would be evolved the tail, I left both ends open that IT might be able to breathe when breath came. Lastly, I secreted it under my cricket. It was what was known as "a box cricket," and the enclosing sides came to within three inches of the floor. It stood at the warmest corner of the hearth, and I was well-nigh roasted by the time I had sat upon it long enough to read the chapter in _Sandford and Merton_ that tells of poor soft Tommy's choice of the shorter end of the pole on which the load was hung, as likely to be the lighter. I guessed that it was now time for me to expect to hear the birth-cry of my Creature, or at least to detect some thrill of life. Lifting a corner of the m.u.f.flings, I insinuated a tentative finger.

IT was warm! And before I withdrew my finger from the rough brown coat I was confident that I felt a throb like a pulse heave ITS sides. It is not an exaggeration to say that I was faint with excitement as I replaced the wrappings. I had never heard of Pygmalion and his statue.

It was thirty years thereafter before I read Mary Sh.e.l.ley's _Frankenstein_. When I did read it I could not fail to recall the picture of the country-bred child, palpitating with awed delight in the belief that she had wrested Something from Nothing. Youth alone is absolutely fearless. The presumption of ignorance is akin to sublimity.

I sat down again to ecstatic dreamings. IT would be all my own when IT was made--a pet so much better worth the having and holding than any that had preceded it in my affections, that I thought of them--even of the ever-lamented Darby and Joan--with compa.s.sionate contempt. I pictured to myself the astonishment of the household, white and colored, in beholding the miracle; the sensation in the neighborhood and county when the news of what had come to pa.s.s was bruited abroad. From the outermost border of Powhatan, from Chesterfield, and mayhap from over the river separating Powhatan from Goochland, people would flock to see me and wonder. Grown-uppers, who had never heard my name until now, would tell other strangers what Mary Hobson Burwell, aged seven, had done. I should be CELEBRATED!

I sat and roasted, shifting my position occasionally that another side might get "done," and seemed to pore over my book until dinner was ready.

"You are eating next to nothing, Molly," remarked my mother, casually, during the meal. "Have you been to see 'Ritta since breakfast?"

"Yes, ma'am," I answered meekly; and she did not observe that I colored uneasily.

Back to my watch I went when the table was cleared, and the others had quitted the room. Uncle Ike replenished the fire, and commended my good sense in "huggin' the chimbley-corner in sech cole weather," before he left me to solitude, to _Sandford and Merton_, and to "Frank." I had resolved to name him for my dear cousin-in-law. When I came to read _Frankenstein_ I marvelled at the coincidence. Frank continued warm, as I ascertained by quarter-hourly pokes, but he did not stir. I must be patient. Precious things were slow of growth.

Full as my mind and heart were of thoughts and hopes too big for expression, my behavior was so nearly normal that no troublesome questions were propounded. I had no difficulty in keeping my secret.

Imaginative children have more secrets to guard than adults ever think of harboring.

I took Frank to bed with me, smuggling him under my pillow, and going to sleep with my hand on him. He was getting warmer every hour.

At midnight a cry--a series of cries--aroused the slumbering household, and drew my father and mother to my room. I had been awakened from sleep too sound for dreams by the bite of sharp teeth upon the thick of my thumb. Even the certainty that Frank had evolved a mouth, and that it was in good working order, could not cheat me into forgetfulness of the terror and pain of that awakening. I jerked my hand from under the pillow and shook Something off upon the floor. I heard it fall, and I heard it run. Frankenstein could not have conceived more intense horror and loathing for his foul, misshapen offspring than overpowered me at that terrible instant. The light in my father's hand showed blood streaming from my thumb and dripping upon the coverlet.

"A mouse, or maybe a young rat, has bitten her," my mother p.r.o.nounced without hesitation. "And no wonder! See how greasy her hand is! Faugh!

How very careless in Chloe to put the child to bed in such a state! Be quiet, Molly! This should be a lesson to you not to go to bed again without washing your hands. You are old enough to think of such things for yourself. My dear child, can't you stop crying? It is not like you to make so much noise over a little hurt."

"She is frightened out of her senses," said my father. "And you must admit that it was rather startling to be aroused by feeling a mouse's teeth nibbling at her hand."

I clung to his neck, shivering with fright and cold. My sobs were uncontrollable.

"It wasn't a mo-use!" I got out, presently. "Nor a ra-at, either!"

"Not a mouse or a rat! How do you know? Did you see it?"

"It was _Fra-a-nk_!" I gulped. "Oh! I'm afraid to stay here! He is in the room somewhere! He will come after me again!"

The scene was ended by my going in my father's arms to my mother's bed for the rest of the night. My mother stayed upstairs with Mary 'Liza.

"But I did not sleep well," was her grieved report at breakfast. "The pillows smelled horribly of sausage, I suppose because Molly's hands were so greasy. Marthy! see that the pillow-cases are changed this morning."