When a play makes a tremendous hit the author is called before the curtain and after bowing and allowing his heart (and his head) to swell more and more, he generously points to the actors and actresses who are grouped around him as much as to say, “They did it.”
And then the audience goes wild at such unselfishness and cries of “Speech, speech!” rend the air and the author has arrived at the happiest moment of his life. He feels that all creation was evolved just for this supreme moment and his knees shake and (in a voice surcharged with emotion) he says things that do not read well in print, but which rouse the house to greater enthusiasm, and he wishes that William Shakespeare could have lived to see this night, and goes home to dream happy dreams.
Sometimes he can’t contain his speech any longer than the end of the third act, and with comparatively little applause, and, it may be, only one solitary call of “Author” (from his devoted brother in the front row) he rushes to the footlights and delivers himself of his pent up eloquence. And then perhaps the critics jump on the piece and kill it, and the next day he wishes he hadn’t spoken.
But no dramatic author would think of going out before the gray asbestos curtain had been raised on the overture to say to the cold, sternly critical audience that this was the proudest moment of his life and that he hoped the actors would see their duty and do it. That would be considered assurance.
And yet we writers of—novels—do rush on before the first chapter has been reached and sometimes we tell how it is going to end and sometimes we give the names of the authorities from whom we lifted our central idea, and sometimes we strike an attitude of timid uncertainty and bespeak the indulgence of the reader—but always without response of any kind.
Not a hand, not a cry of “Author”: nothing but the gray asbestos curtain of silence.
Of course there are cases when a book runs into the “six best selling class” and people get into the habit of buying it and the habit is not broken for weeks and weeks; and then, after the twentieth edition is exhausted the author comes out with a “Preface to the twenty-first edition,” and as he smells the fragrance of the bouquets that the critics have handsomely handed out and hears the plaudits of those who have thronged to read him he says brokenly, “I thank you. You have raised me from a point where I was living on my brother in the front row to a position where I can take my pick of motor cars” (Not automobiles, mind you), “and while I never thought of money while I was writing the book, now I both think and have a good deal of it. Thank you! Thank you!”
But I, (rather than not come out at all) am going to squeeze before the gray asbestos and say “Thank you. Critics, readers; gentle and otherwise, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
“If there is anything good in this book, believe me it is the characters who are responsible for it.
“And let me take this occasion to say that the book would never have been written if I had not been encouraged by one who has the faculty of making a man do his best. She is here to-night, but I am not permitted to mention her.
“I have had great fun writing ‘Minerva’s Man?uvres,’ and this is really the proudest moment of my life. (Cheers.) My heroine, Minerva, is a good girl and I can give her a fine character if she should ever seek a place—in your hearts.
“Thank you! Thank you!”
(Curtain goes up.)
C. B. L.
AT the last minute we learned that the girl we had counted upon to do our cooking at Clover Lodge had scarlet fever, and as she was the only local girl that we could hire—New England girls preferring to work in a “shop” to domestic service—we were at our wits’ end.
In our extremity Mrs. Vernon (my wife) made a last appeal to Minerva. She went into the kitchen of our New York flat and said,
“Minerva, Mamie Logan, the girl we expected to have up at Clover Lodge, has scarlet fever.”
Minerva was blacking the stove (as I could see from the dining room), but she stopped and turned around as she always did when her mistress spoke to her, and said “Yas’m.”
“Well, do you know what that means, Minerva?”
“Means she’s sick, ma’am.”
“Yes, but it also means that I haven’t anybody to cook for me up there.”
“Yas’m.”
“Well, don’t you think you could go up if we gave you five dollars a month more than you’re getting now?”
Minerva rubbed her already black arm with the blacking brush in an absent-minded sort of way as she said,
“’Deed I hate the country. It’s so dismal.”
I would have given up trying to get her to come then, as her tone sounded final to me, but Mrs. Vernon caught a gleam of willingness in her expression, and she said,
“Some country places may be doleful, Minerva, but Clover Lodge is in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and there’s a light kitchen and you can take ‘Miss Pussy,’ you know. I’m sure you’ll like it and the work won’t be as hard as it is here and there’s lots of fresh air. And I’ll lend you books to read. If you won’t come we’ll have to give up going, as I won’t take a stranger up from the city.”
“Yas’m,” said Minerva, turning to the stove and beginning to use the brush again.
“Well, will you go, Minerva?”
“Yas’m.”
“Oh, you dear good thing,” said my wife, and I fully expected her to hug Minerva.
She came in to where I was finishing my second cup of coffee and said,
“Minerva is a jewel. She’s going up. Do you know, in some ways it’s better than if we had Mamie Logan because Minerva is a much better cook and she won’t have any beaux from the village to make a noise in the kitchen in the evening—”
“No, but you may have to import beaux from Thompson Street to solace her loneliness,” said I. “If I know the kind at all, Minerva will die one day away from New York.”
“Nonsense,” said Ethel. “She can’t help falling in love with the view from the kitchen windows. That lovely old purple Mount Nebo.”
I had my doubts of a New York born and bred colored cook falling in love with any view that did not comprehend a row of city houses somewhere in its composition, but I said nothing. The doctor had told me that Ethel absolutely needed a long rest in the “real country,” hill country preferred, and even if I had to go out and help Minerva in the kitchen I was going up.
We had spent a delightful week at Clover Lodge the year before with the Chauncey Wheelocks, but this year they were going to Europe and had proposed our renting it furnished and had promised Mamie Logan as cook. But a cordon bleu is not immune from scarlet fever, as we had found to our vexation—although I doubt if we felt it as much as Mamie did. She, by the way, had actually liked scenery and had told Mrs. Vernon that the distant old mountain peak was company for her while she was washing dishes. But a purple peak would not take the place of the yellow lights of a great city to Minerva and I looked forward to varied experiences, although I said nothing about my expectations to Ethel.
I half expected Minerva to back out when it came to going, but she did not. Possibly the excitement of going on the cars had something to do with her fortitude. Possibly the diversion that “Miss Pussy” afforded made her forget that she was leaving her beloved city.
The cat was a startler and no mistake. While the train was in motion she kept quiet, but whenever we stopped at a station she let forth ear splitting shrieks, acting exactly as if she were being tortured. More than one non-smoking man sought refuge in the smoker and many were the black looks cast at Minerva.
I was glad that she sat behind us, for I did not wish to be mixed up in the affair. As for her she shrieked with laughter every time that the cat shrieked with dismay, and I felt that the cat, though unpleasant, was really making our journey easier, as it kept Minerva from dwelling upon her exile.
We took a branch road at Springfield and a half hour later we were in a wagon, climbing the steep ascent that leads to Clover Lodge.
The cat, sniffing fresh air and longing to be at liberty, redoubled its howls, but Minerva no longer laughed. She looked at the distant hills in an awed sort of way and sighed.
I sat with the driver, and Mrs. Vernon told Minerva interesting bits about the locality through which we were passing, but a languid “Yas’m” was the only reply she vouchsafed. She was fast falling a prey to nostalgia.
Upon our arrival at Clover Lodge there was enough to do to keep every one busy. The frantic cat was set free as soon as we arrived and she scudded under the house and we saw no more of her for some time. I did not think much of it at the moment, but when after our somewhat picnic dinner I heard Minerva at the back of the house calling in heart breaking tones “Miss Pussy, Miss Pussy, woan’ you come out? Come ou—t,” I realized that I should have chained the cat in the kitchen. It might stay away for a day or two in order to express its contempt for people who could subject it to such humiliation.
I was enjoying a smoke and Ethel was lying down. Oh, what a blessed relief this was from the noise and odours and bustle of the city!
“I can’t get out. Mist. Vernon! Mist. Vernon! I can’t get out. Ow.”
The sounds seemed to come from under the kitchen. I side-tracked my peaceful thoughts, laid my cigar on the railing of the piazza and ran around to the kitchen door and beheld Minerva wedged fast under the house. Clover Lodge has a very diminutive cellar which does not extend as far as the kitchen. There is a space of some two feet between the kitchen floor and the ground, used as a receptacle for various odds and ends in the way of boxes, clothes poles and the like, and our stout Minerva had attempted to creep under there in order to get Miss Pussy, whose tell-tale eyes gleamed at her from the darkness. She had failed to take into account the fact that her head could go where her body could not follow and she had become stuck.
“It’s all right, Minerva. I’ll get you out. There’s very little room for promenading there. I’ll have to knock a board out. I’ll get an axe.”
She kept up her groaning and at last Ethel was aroused by it, and, somewhat alarmed, hurried into the kitchen and saw the sprawling figure of Minerva with Clover Lodge on her back. The spectacle appealed to her sense of humour and she retreated to where she could laugh.
I had a somewhat ticklish job to get Minerva out unhurt. It was awkward splitting the board without touching her, but I compassed it at last, although each stroke of the axe was followed by a groan from Minerva, a spit from the cat and a suppressed laugh from Ethel, who was viewing the proceedings from a little distance.
When the board fell away and had been removed, Minerva, like an alligator, crawled in a little farther, so as to turn around, and then she crawled out face foremost, leaving Miss Pussy saying most ungenerous things there in the dusk.
“The cat will come out in a while, Minerva,” said I. “Are you hurt?”
Minerva was sitting on the ground, listening intently.
“What’s dem noises?” said she; “Oh, dis ain’ no place for me. Heah dem moanin’s in de grass.”
“Dem moanin’s in de grass” were bull frogs in a little pond not far away, but I dare say she pictured the meadows as full of people who had been enticed from the city and were now expiring under the evening sky, far from their friends.
I explained what the noise was and she returned to the kitchen, while I resumed consumption of my cigar and Ethel returned to her room, but in a few minutes:
“Mis. Vernon. Mis. Vernon. Ain’t there no more lights?”
Ethel had dropped asleep, so I went out into the kitchen. Minerva had lighted two lamps, and to me the kitchen looked like a ball room, it was so light, but the dusky maid from the Metropolis was seeing New York in her mind’s eye, and two kerosene lamps did not take the place of the firmament of gas and electric lights to which she had been used all her life.
“It is the first night and I will humour her,” thought I, and so I brought out a lamp from the parlour and another from the sitting room. I had the light from my cigar and needed no other.
When all four lamps had united to cast their radiance upon the kitchen Minerva was satisfied and thanked me in a die-a-way tone that, being interpreted, meant “Give me back New York with its crowds, and its noise and its glitter and its entertaining ‘gentlemen’ and its ice cream and soda.” Poor Minerva! Our joy and happiness came from the very things that were the abomination of desolation to her.
Meanwhile Ethel awoke from her nap and came down stairs. “Mercy, how dark it is. Why didn’t you light a lamp? Where are you, Philip?”
“I’m out on the piazza. Come out?”
“No, dear, I want to finish that story of Mrs. Everard Cotes’. I’m fascinated with it.”
“Ethel, come here,” said I, in a tone full of meaning.
She felt her way out.
“Minerva needed the gleam of many lights in the kitchen and I’ve plucked a lamp from every room. You’ll tire your eyes reading. Come and sit with me.”
Ethel gave a little chuckle and sat down in the chair I provided.
“Dear, it will end by our becoming her slaves.”
“Anything to keep her,” said I. “Who wants a light but the great light of stars. I suppose that to-night on all this broad continent there is no soul so wretched as poor Minerva, deprived of her elevator man and the girl across the hall—and all, that we may live in comfort. Who are we, Ethel, that we should do this thing?”
“Oh, stop your nonsense. Minerva will be all right when the sun shines.”
The light from the kitchen window shone away down the hill and lighted up the pool in which the bull frogs were “moaning.” Above their chorus we heard a wail.
“What’s that, an owl?”
“No, Ethel, that’s a howl. It’s Minerva again.”
We could now distinguish “So dismal!”
“You go and hold her in your lap and rock her to sleep. I can’t,” said I.
Ethel sighed herself. It was becoming monotonous. She rose and went into the kitchen, feeling her way cautiously through the dark sitting room, yet stumbling over a foot stool.
It looked to me as if we would be forced to take turns sitting outside of Minerva’s bedroom door, guarding her against the horrors of a country night, but after a time Ethel returned to me and told me that “Miss Pussy” had come in for dinner and that Minerva was perfectly happy and was going to take her to bed with her.
Soon after that she retired, and, being tired out with the labours and tribulations of the day, she slept like a log all night, and we were enabled to enjoy our repose undisturbed.
I rose early next morning and sang gaily, and I sang with a purpose. It might disturb Mrs. Vernon’s last nap, but it could not fail to make Minerva realize that she was not alone in the country, whereas if she had risen first and had seen nothing in the world but the great silent mountain she might have fled incontinently to the city.
When she came down to the kitchen, carrying the cat in her arms, I had already started the fire.
“Good morning, Minerva,” said I. “I haven’t built a kitchen fire since I was a small boy, and I wanted to see if I could do it. Excellent draught. Did you sleep well?”
“Yas’r.”
The laconic answer was in itself a symptom that she felt better.
“And the cat came back?” said I.
“Yas’r.”
I left the kitchen and took a walk in the cool morning air. All was well with the world. Minerva had slept and had learned that a night in the country was not fatal and Miss Pussy had recovered her equanimity. I sought for an appetite in the pine woods, and I found one.
I BLESSED Heaven for the lovely day that had come to us. If it had been rainy or even gray we should have had a hard time to keep Minerva. But even a hidebound cockney like herself could tolerate the sweetness of the air and the softness of the clouds and the brightness of the sun.
Ethel made cake so that she could be in the kitchen. I did not exactly approve of it, because the day was meant to be spent in the open, and I wanted to swing hammocks out in the pine woods and read a new novel which had been recommended to me as excellent for reading aloud, but I well knew the wisdom of getting Minerva started right, and I dare say that Ethel’s amiable conversation made her forget that the cook on the “other side of the hall” was nearly two hundred miles away.
At lunch time, Ethel looked very much heated and worn, and I said to myself, “Better me in the kitchen making impossible cake and regaling Minerva with anecdotes than Ethel neutralizing all the effects of this delicious country air in her efforts to keep our cook contented.” So, after lunch, I put up the hammocks and then I insisted on Ethel’s taking her embroidery and coming out to the woods.
“And what will Minerva do? She is afraid of the crickets, and I dare not leave her all the afternoon alone until she is acclimated.”
“No, of course she can’t be left. I didn’t intend her to be left. I will go and learn how to make bread, or, better still, I will paint the floor. Doesn’t the floor need painting?”
“Now, Philip, don’t be foolish. Of course you can’t stay in the kitchen. It’s no place for a man—”
“Nor is it any place for a woman who has come to the country for her health. And yet Minerva won’t stay here alone. What’s to be done?”
Ethel thought a minute and then said:
“I have some plain sewing that I want done and Minerva is very handy with her needle. She makes all her own clothes. She shall come to the pine woods with us and sew a fine seam until it’s time to start dinner, and then we can go back to the house and sit on the piazza. It’s not as pleasant as the woods, but we’ll be within ear call.”
This seemed preposterous, but if I disapproved and Minerva left, Ethel would be apt to blame me, so I consented and we all went to the grove, like a happy family of three. I read out loud from the new novel, but I don’t think that Minerva cared much for it, because when Miss Pussy, who had accompanied us, brought a bird and laid it at her mistress’ feet, Minerva broke right into my reading with:
“Why, Mis. Vernon, Miss Pussy has a bird, and it ain’t a sparrer an’ it ain’t a canary. What other kinds is there?”
Then the reading was stopped while Ethel gave a lesson in ornithology to the child of the city streets. I did not mind her absorbing all the learning she could, but I resented the interruption and I arose and walked away, wondering how long this thing was going to last. I had no doubt that in another week we would be giving a party in Minerva’s honour, and that we should take out a subscription for her in the Booklovers’ seemed foreordained. She must learn “How to Know the Trees,” and “How to Become a True Nature Lover in Six Lessons,” and “How to Listen to Birds,” and particularly “How to Forget the City.” If I could get her that book I would be willing to pay almost any price for it. Also, “How to Teach a Cook to Depend on Herself for Her Joys.” This traipsing around after us was not what I had expected.
My way led out to the road that runs below the pine grove, and I had barely emerged from the wood when I was hailed with a “Well, well, we are in luck! Where’s the Missus?” and there were Harry Farnet and his wife Rose, looking lost in a three-seated wagon drawn by two horses.
“Where did you drop from?” said I, for Harry Farnet is a New Yorker who generally runs over to Europe in the summer.
“Why, we’re at South Edgeley for a couple of weeks,” said he, “and the Longleys, who are staying at the Hillcrest, told us you had taken a cottage here for the summer, and so we thought we’d chance finding you in and take you back to dine and spend the evening, and then ride home in the moonlight. How’s Ethel?”
“Ethel is middling well, but she’s playing nurse girl to our cook and it is wearing on her just a little—and on me a great deal.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rose.
“Why, we brought up Minerva, you know—the treasure that we’ve had for three winters, and we find that she needs a city setting to be a jewel of the first water. She is so lonesome that we spend most of our time coddling her. She’s afraid of the frogs and moans for the delights of Gotham.”
“Poor thing! Well, she won’t have to bother with dinner to-night, so just give her a book—here, give her this box of candy. It’s quite dreadful, but I’m sure she’ll like it, and it’ll keep her mind off her troubles for quite a while. Jump in and take us to your house. Is Ethel there?”
“No, we’re all just up in the woods above. I’ve been reading to her, with interruptions from Minerva. Minerva and Kate Douglas Wiggin do not appear to be twin souls. Ethel! Ethel!” I called, and she answered, and a minute later she came in view and was both surprised and overjoyed to see the Farnets. Rose and she went to school together and they have always kept up an intimacy.
“Hello, you dear thing! You’re going riding with us—going to take dinner with us—we’re at South Edgeley, and in the evening we’ll drive you back.”
“Lovely!” cried Ethel, enthusiastically, and I was glad that the Farnets had come. Ethel needed company just as much as Minerva.
I heard a dead limb cracking in the woods above, and, looking up, saw Minerva, her eyes wide open and fearful, as if she thought we were going to leave her to perish in nature’s solitudes. For Ethel was just stepping into the carriage.
“That’s Minerva,” said Ethel to Rose. “Our cook. You know her, don’t you? Perfect jewel, but it’s the first time she has ever been away from New York, and she is very mournful.”
“So Philip was saying,” said Rose. “I tell him to give her a box of this dreadful chewing candy. It’s some we got at the only store in South Edgeley, and if she starts a piece it will keep her busy chewing for an hour at least. You’re not afraid to leave her, are you?”
“No, I’m not afraid,” said Ethel; “but I’m afraid she will be. She’s a hare for timidity. Oh, Minerva! we’re going for a ride and you needn’t get dinner to-night. We’ll be back before bed time.”
“Go’n’ to leave me alone in that God-forsaken house?” said Minerva, in such evident terror that Ethel shook her head at Rose and said, “I can’t do it. It would be heartless. You stay here and dine with us. We have loads of provisions.”
“No, Mamma will expect us. We told her we were going to get you and she’ll expect us. Our landlady has two seats waiting for you. You must come.”
Here was a vexing situation. It would be downright cruel to maroon Minerva, and yet we didn’t like to give up our anticipated pleasure.
There was more noise in the woods and “Miss Pussy” jumped out of a tree with a chipmunk in her mouth.
“Oh, Mis. Vernon, look at Miss Pussy! She’s got a striped rat. I never see sich a place for wild animals. I couldn’ no more stay alone—”
She paused for a phrase strong enough, and Rose clapped her hands and said,
“I have it. Minerva shall be your maid and ride on the back seat. This old ark was the only thing we could get, but now the third seat will be of some use.”
Miss Pussy dropped the chipmunk at Minerva’s feet, and Minerva jumped backward pretty nearly a yard.
“She’s killed it, Minerva. That chipmunk will never have a chance to hurt you,” said I in a consolatory tone. That reminded me of “Miss Pussy.”
“We can’t take the cat along,” said I to Ethel. “When the cat travels I prefer to be doing something else. I can still hear her cries on the train.”
“Well, shut her up in the house,” said Harry. He looked at his watch. “Come, it’s time we were starting. It’s up hill half the way back.”
“You can say that of any drive around here,” said I.
Minerva climbed in much as a mountain would have done it, and we started for the house to get wraps.
“The time we came up and this time are the on’y times I was ever in an open wagon,” said Minerva.
“Minerva is getting loquacious,” said I to Ethel.
Minerva overheard me and said,
“No, I ain’t, sir, not when they’s any one around. I’ll git used to it if there’s somethin’ doin’ all the time.”
“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” said Harry to me. “Master of the Revels. You might give her a lawn party—”
Rose shook her head warningly at her husband and we changed the subject, but it was plain to be seen that all Minerva needed was the excitement of society. If we made her our guest and I did the cooking we would have no difficulty in keeping her contented.
There was nothing worthy of note regarding Minerva during our ride to South Edgeley. She sat on the back seat and tangled her jaws in the candy, and I presume that she had a good dinner at the Farnet’s boarding house. Certainly we did and we enjoyed that and the ride back very much, and rejoiced that we had friends so near, although as Harry did not own the horses and the haying season was “on,” it was not likely that the Farnets and we would often meet, unless we walked toward each other and met at some half way point—and there again Minerva would be in the way. A three-mile walk with Minerva tagging behind like a younger sister was not a tempting idea.
However, the doctor had said that Ethel must have a good long rest in the country, and her needs were paramount. Without Minerva to cook she could not rest, and we must keep Minerva though the heavens should fall.
We were talking quietly about Minerva that evening after the Farnets had driven home, when the light in her bedroom that had been shining out on an elm at the side of the house, suddenly disappeared, there came a shriek, and then,
“Oh, Lordy, oh Lordy, leggo my hair.”
I thought of tramps, but Ethel, being a woman, divined what had happened and bade me light a lantern quickly. I rushed to the kitchen and lighted it. The house was not on fire, that was certain. Minerva was either having a fit or an encounter with a burglar, for there was a sound as of heavy foot-falls and choking ejaculations.
I seized the kitchen poker, expecting to sell my life at a bargain, but Ethel looked at me commiseratingly and with the one word “Bat,” she hurried up the back stairs.
I must say that at first I took the word to mean that Minerva had been imbibing and I wondered at Ethel’s using so idiomatic an expression, but when she entered the room and the sounds almost immediately stopped, to be followed by sobbing, I suddenly divined what she meant.
“No, Minerva, it isn’t poisonous.” (More lessons in Natural History.) “Probably the poor thing was more frightened than you are.”
I did not think it at all likely. At any rate, it had been far more reticent.
“I’ll give you a screen from the spare room to put in your window. It was attracted by the light. It’s a sort of mouse with wings.”
“Striped rats and mice with wings! Lordy, the country’s awful!”
Poor Minerva! She must have been surprised to see that country horses were just like those of the city. Certainly a horse has more evil potentiality than a stupid little bat, but when a beast has you by the hair and you see him, as it were, through the back of your head, he is apt to loom large and terrifying.
Quiet was soon restored and Ethel came down with the lantern. I put away the poker which I had been holding ever since I picked it up.
“It’s the greatest mercy in the world that the lamp went out. She knocked it over when the bat hit her.”
“What next? Is the room moth miller proof? Could she survive a June bug?”
“Well, really, it’s nothing to laugh at. If you ever have a bat in your back hair you’ll not think of laughing.”
As my back hair is fast going to join the snows of yesteryear, I considered this a most unkind cut, but I was above retaliating—as I could not think of anything to say.
“Well, Minerva has now been here a whole day and she’s hardly been out of our sight. I admit that she is an excellent cook and a hard worker, but as a steady visitor who, rides with us and sews with us she is likely to pall. Hasn’t she a mother who can come and visit her?”
“No,” Ethel answered, “Minerva is an only child.”
“And a child only,” said I.
THE next morning broke with an east wind blowing and a wet rain falling, but Ethel said that the two days in the country had made her feel like a different woman already, so I did not mind the rain, although a rainy day in the country, unless one be well fortified, either by inner grace or outer books and the good things of life, is apt to be a dreary affair.
Breakfast was delicious. We have never had a cook who had so much—well, you might call it temperament, as Minerva has. She will toss off a roll with the lightness that makes it a work of art, and her fried chicken is better than the broiled chicken of most cooks.
Ethel already better, and the breakfast such a poem: why, I felt that I was to be envied, and I wondered how people could be content to spend their summers on alien piazzas, eating hotel dinners and watching hotel dwellers dress and pose and gossip.
There had been no more bats in Minerva’s belfry, and as she had always seemed like a sensible girl in the city, I made up my mind that she was reconciled to the country and that in a few days she would begin to have very much the same feeling for it that we have—for Ethel and I were born in the city, and the country is an acquired taste with us.
But while I was browsing around in the Wheelocks’ library, Ethel came to me and said:
“The worst has happened, Philip. Minerva says she won’t stay—that she just can’t. She wants you to get a horse and take her to the station right away.”
I laid down my book with a sigh. “What’s the matter now?” said I. “More wild animals?”
“No, it’s the rain and the east wind. She says the moaning of it through the shutters is awful and she can’t stand it.”
“Might have known it,” said I, bitterly. “I might have known it. You’re beginning to feel better and the worst seems to be over, and then Minerva plays her trump card and takes the cake.”
My metaphors were sadly mixed, but I didn’t care. I was not at that moment trying to construct logical metaphors. I foresaw what would happen if Minerva left and Ethel went into the kitchen permanently. A sanitarium for her and I an enforced bachelor in some city room—for we had let our flat for the summer.
I do not often interfere with the household work, for my business keeps me at home most of the time, and I hold that when man and wife are both at home it is better to have but one housekeeper and that one a woman, but now I went out into the kitchen to try to mend matters, and I found Minerva looking at the steadily falling rain that was making Mount Nebo look like a ghost of itself. Now and again the blind rattled and always the wind moaned through it with a wintry effect that would have been admirably adapted to the return of the prodigal daughter.
And with each wail of the wind Minerva answered antiphonally, almost as if she were taking lessons in keening.
“Oh, myomy, myomy!”
Back and forth she rocked, her eyes glued to the dismal prospect (dismal to her, but with a surpassing beauty to sympathetic eyes), and the tears rolling down her face.
“Why, Minerva, what’s the matter? Got a toothache?” said I, affecting to be unwitting of the cause of her sorrow.
“’Deed, suh, it’s wuss’n a toothache. It’s the heartache. I knowed better when I said I’d come. Nance Jawnson told me how haw’ble the country was, but I felt sorry for Mis. Vernon, and so I come. Please get me away in a wagon. That wind whines like it was a dawg howlin’ an’ I can’t stand dawgs howlin’ ’cause my sisteh died of one.”
Her words were ambiguous, but I was in no mood to carp or criticise. She was suffering as acutely as a little child suffers when you throw her doll over the fence and I felt I must cheer her up and keep her if it—if it took all summer.
“Well, Minerva, we can soon stop the wind’s howling by opening the blinds.” I suited the action to the words and the wild moaning of the wind ceased. It was really almost as if the wind had been asking to have the blinds opened.
“Now you see, Minerva, that’s stopped and the rain will stop after awhile.”
“Yas’r, but it’s lonesome an’ I didn’t bring my ’cordeen. I forgot it till now.”
I knew she was a great hand to be trying patent medicines and supposed she referred to some bottled stuff, so I said,
“Oh, well, if that’s all, I can send for your medicine, or perhaps I can get some at Egerton.”
She looked at me in surprise as she said,
“I didn’ say nothin’ ’bout med’cine. I said I left my ’cordeen—”
“Oh, your accordeon. Can you play that?” said I, thankful that she had forgotten it.
“Yes indeedy.”
Her face grew pensive as she thought of the dreadful musical instrument which she had mercifully forgotten. I had never heard her use it at home, but Ethel told me afterward that she had been in the habit of going up on the roof with other cooks and the janitor, and that her departure was always followed by weird strains which Ethel had supposed was the janitor discoursing music that had the dyingest fall of anything ever heard. But it seems that Minerva was the performer, and among those whose ears are ravished by the “linked sweetness long drawn out”—and then pushed back again, she was accounted an adept.
Perhaps I could hold her by means of the accordeon. It was worth trying.
“Minerva,” said I, “Mrs. Vernon tells me that you want me to drive you down to the station and get you a ticket for New York. Now, if you go it will be a discreditable performance and an act unworthy of one who has always been well treated.”
I paused. The words were some of them a little beyond her, but they had made the more impression for that very fact.
“Mrs. Vernon is not strong enough to do the work and she came up here to gain strength. You are a very good cook, but if you left us now we would not care to have you when we returned to the city, and you will not find mistresses like Mrs. Vernon everywhere. There are those who forget that a servant is a human being, and you might happen to get such a mistress as that. I repeat that your going would be distinctly discreditable, utterly reprehensible and in the nature of a bad act. Now, if you must go, I am not the one to keep you, but if you go you go for good, which is not likely to be good for you.”
“Yas’r,” said Minerva, blinking at me.
“Now, if I send for your accordeon, will you give me your word of honour to stay your month out?”
I had used such a severe tone, mingled with what sorrow I could weave into it, and spotted with incomprehensible words, that Minerva was much impressed, and she said in a tone that was already more hopeful, “I give you my word, Mist. Vernon. My ’cordeen is like human folks to me.”
“Very well, I will write for it by the next mail. Where shall I tell Mr. Corson to look for it?”
“Mr. Corson ain’t got it. I lent it to the jan’ter the night befo’ I lef’ an’ he fo’got to give it back an’ I fo’got about it till the wind began to moan at me an’ then I got mo’ homesick ’an ever an’ thought of it.”
Think of being willing to swap the music of the wind for the cacophony of an accordeon! And yet, when some composer of the future introduces one in his Afro-American symphony and Felix Weingartner gives the symphony in Carnegie Hall, there may come a rage for accordeons and we shall no longer associate them with tenement houses and itinerant toughs, white and black.
I hastened to write the letter to the janitor, whose name was George W. Calhoun Lee, and Ethel, being housebound anyway, went into the kitchen to preserve some blueberries. I do not like preserved blueberries; neither does she, but there was nothing else she could think of to do in the kitchen, and Minerva needed “human folks” pending the arrival of the ’cordeen.
The Dalton boy came for the mail at noon and he had with him a string of trout. They were fresh from the brook and were still wriggling. I saw him pass into the house, and I followed him into the kitchen; for a string of trout is a joy to the eye—and I had a suspicion that Minerva would not know what to do with them.
She stared at them with the interest of a child, giggling every time one twitched its tail.
“Wha’ makes ’em move that way?” asked she of no one in particular.
“Why, they’re not dead yet,” I answered.
“An’ come all the way from New York?”
“Why, Minerva, these were caught in the brook down there in the valley. Weren’t they, Bert?”
“Yes, sir. Ketched all five inside an hour.”
Minerva’s eyes opened wider. “What’s a nower?” asked she.
Bert looked puzzled and so did Ethel, but I was able to explain and somehow the explanation struck Minerva as being very funny. She went off into a fit of laughter just like those she had had on the train when the cat howled.
“Inside a nower. That’s one awn me. Inside an hour.”
Ordinarily one does not go into the kitchen and provide amusement for the cook, but the events of the past few hours had so altered the complexion of things that I felt distinctly elated at having, in however humble a way, ministered to the joy of one as leaden hearted as Minerva and her laughter was so unctious, once it had got fairly started that first the Dalton boy, then Ethel, and at last I joined in and the east wind must have been astonished at his lack of power over our temperaments.
After the laughter had subsided and Bert had gone on his way with the precious letter to G. W. C. Lee, I was about to leave the kitchen, forgetful of my errand, when Minerva, in a tone of delightful camaraderie, said,
“Mist. Vernon, I can’t skin them fishes alive. They always come skinned from the fish store.”
“Well, I’ll kill them and scale them and clean them, and you can watch me, and the next time you’ll know how.”
Ethel had finished her berry canning and she now left the kitchen, winking at me as she did so as much as to say it was now my turn at the wheel. It was years since I had dressed a fish, but I snapped each one on the head as I had been taught to do by country boys in my own boyhood, and then I prepared them for the pan, scraping off much of their beauty in the process.
“Do they have North River shad out in that brook?” asked Minerva as I worked.
I thought at first it was a little pleasantry, but, looking at her, I saw she was perfectly serious—in fact, very serious, and I explained to her that cod and blue fish and sturgeon and sword fish never penetrated to these mountain brooks, preferring the sea; and so, with cheerful chat on both our parts, we bridged over the end of the morning and a half a day was gone with Minerva in a better frame of mind than she had been the day before with the sun shining. So valuable a thing is diplomacy.
While I was washing my hands, preparatory to lunch, Ethel being engaged in fixing her hair, I heard Minerva break out into song, and a moment later someone began to whistle in the kitchen.
Our window commanded a view of the side path, and no one had entered the kitchen since I had left it, but nevertheless two people were giving a somewhat unpleasant duet in the kitchen. The whistle did not accord with the voice, which had considerable of the natural coloured flavour—if flavour can have colour.
“Who can it be?” said I. “Minerva doesn’t know a soul up here, and no one up here would be apt to know ‘In the Good Old Summer Time.’”
“It’s positively uncanny,” said Ethel, taking the last hair pin out of her mouth and putting it into her hair. “I’m going to see. I want Minerva to make chocolate for lunch, and I forgot to tell her.”
Ethel went down and I hastily dried my hands and followed. If this fellow musician could be caged I would keep him for Minerva’s delectation. He should hang in the kitchen—so to speak. Minerva was evidently enjoying the duet—even more than we were.
I hurried and came within sight of the kitchen just as Ethel entered it. Ethel turned and came quickly toward me, her hand over her mouth to pen up her mirth.
We both rushed up stairs and sat down and had our second laugh of the morning in spite of the east wind. There was only one person in the kitchen, Minerva by name, and she was providing an obligato for her singing with her own lips. Minerva was performing the hitherto impossible feat of singing and whistling at the same time.
“When the ’cordeen comes,” said Ethel, “Minerva will be a trio.”
WE retired that night feeling that our hold on Minerva was stronger than it had been hitherto, and we slept the sleep of the unworried.
But we were awakened at a little past midnight by a noise as of a somewhat heavy cat coming up stairs. Miss Pussy is heavy, but her tread is absolutely noiseless, so it could not be she, and we could hear Minerva snoring in her room, so it was not she.
“It’s a burglar,” whispered Ethel, wide awake in an instant.
I did not like the thought, which waked me wide also. I like burglars in books, but in real life there are too many possibilities wrapped up in them to make them agreeable companions of the night.
I hope I am not a coward, but I am not war-like. If a burglar has resolved on entering my house I say let him get away with the goods and then I’ll lose no time in putting in burglar alarms so as to be prepared thereafter, but to get up and attack a burglar with a chair or to attempt to expostulate with him lies outside of my province, and I hoped that these sounds would prove to be caused by shrinking wood or cracking plaster.
Creak, creak, creak. There was not a shadow of a doubt that some one was coming up the stairs. Ethel pulled the pillow over her face and I could feel her trembling. I sat up in bed and tried to feel brave. Tried it two or three times in obedience to the old saying anent succeeding but to be honest I did not feel brave.
The steps came nearer and Ethel, whose hearing is wonderfully acute, suddenly threw off the pillow, and sat up in bed also, saying:
“Philip, we must not let Minerva hear him or she will leave in the morning.”
“Sh!” said I, “be still. There he is.” We both put on the semblance of slumber.
The moon was shining into the room and we now saw a burly looking fellow with a bag over his shoulder walk past our door and peer into the spare room.
The Wheelock furnishings are plain and our own belongings would pack in small space and bring little in open market and it struck both Ethel and myself in spite of our fears that it was very funny for a burglar to be looking for plunder in our cottage.
I fancy that he himself saw he had picked out a poor house, for he left the spare room, contented himself with a casual glance into our sparsely furnished bedroom and then went creaking down the stairs again. Burglars in books make no noise, but I am sure I could have gone down stairs more quietly than he did and I was in an agony of fear—no longer of him but that Minerva might wake up and become panic stricken.
The burglar went as far as the kitchen and then he actually stumbled over a chair and this brought about the dreaded result. Minerva waked up and the next instant we heard a husky,
“Is that you, Mis. Vernon?”
Next we heard steps in her hall and the query repeated in a louder tone,
“Is that you, Mis. Vernon?”
Then came a shriek. She had evidently encountered the burglar.
“Oh, Philip, what shall we do?” said Ethel. “Don’t you think it will be safe to go and tell the burglar to go away? Minerva will surely go into hysterics and leave in the morning.”
“She’s gone there now. Hear her!”
The noise occasioned by the advent of the bat was as nothing compared to the din that Minerva let out upon the midnight air.
And now we heard a man’s voice, the voice of the burglar.
“Be quiet. I’m not going to hurt you. I made a mistake in the house.”
Made a mistake in the house and the next one half a mile away!
“Philip, if he were a dangerous burglar he would have shot her by this. Go and speak to him and tell him to go away.”
It was a risky proceeding, but after all we had gone through I was determined to keep Minerva with us at any risk, so pulling a dressing gown over my pajamas and leaping into my slippers, I went down stairs choking down my rising heart.
I met the burglar coming down the back stairs with his hands in his ears to shut out the shrieks that arose from Minerva.
When he saw me he sat down on the stairs and said, “I thought so. I thought she’d waken the house.”
Now this was a queer way for a burglar to act and it gave me heart. By all the rules of burglary the man should either have given me one in the jaw or a bit of lead in the lung or else he should have rushed past me and escaped, but he sat down on the top step and reminded me of Francis Wilson by the quaintness of his intonation and the expression that came over his face.
“Come here. I won’t hurt you,” said I, much as I might talk to a huge mastiff whose intentions were problematical. “Are you a family man?”
“Yes,” said he, astonished by the question into answering it.
“Well, then, you will understand my position when I tell you that the girl whom you have started into hysterics up there is our cook, our only cook, and if we lose her we’ll be absolutely cookless. You’re a burglar, are you not? Be frank.”
“Well, if you appeal to me that way, I am,” said he.
“Well, she’s frightened stiff. Even if you go away now and nothing further happens she will follow in the morning because she will expect burglars every night. Now I’m going to try to convince her that you stopped in here to ask the way to the village or to borrow a book—anything but that you’re a burglar, and I want you to help me out.”
“The idea is farcical,” said he smiling quite as if we were having a friendly chat after a dinner in his honour.
“No doubt it is farcical,” said I, “but if I can overcome Minerva’s fears by any means I’m going to do it. She’ll go into a fit pretty soon if the cause is not removed.”
“She’s most there now,” said the burglar. And he told the truth. Minerva had not ceased to use each breath in the manufacture of wild yawps that outdid her performances the evening of the bat.
“I’ll go and tell her to dress and come down and I’ll explain it all to her. We have to handle her with gloves on account of cooks being so scarce. You understand?”
“I understand. I have a little home in Pittsfield and half the time my wife does the cooking although ‘business’ is unusually good.”
“What is your busin—?”
I noticed his bag and stopped. How absent minded of me to ask.
“I don’t believe it is always as bad as it is to-night,” said I with a laugh. “My income doesn’t admit of anything for burglars. I only make enough for myself and my wife.”
“I believe you,” said he. “I saw that when I got up stairs and if I had not kicked over that cursed chair I would have been a mile away by now.”
I started to call up stairs to Minerva when the burglar’s eyes moved to a point behind me and turning, I saw Ethel, fully dressed and very calm. Her fear of losing Minerva had overcome her fear of the burglar and she had come down to see what she could do.
“Ethel, this is the burglar who woke us up, but he has taken nothing, and he’s going to fib a little so that Minerva may be brought out of her hysterical state. Please go up stairs and tell her to dress and come down; that there’s no danger, but I want to see her about something.”
With excitement and amusement struggling for the mastery on her features Ethel went up stairs and in a few moments the shrieks subsided.
“What induced you to come to such a place as this, so far off the line of travel?”
“Exactly that,” said the burglar, “because it was off the line of travel and because I have made some of my richest hauls in houses like this.”
“Aren’t you ashamed to be a burglar?” said I, thinking that I might do some missionary work.
“Now see here,” said he, rising from the chair in which he had seated himself after Ethel had gone up stairs, “I did not come here to be catechised or criticised. I came here to do business and I found it was impossible, so let us forget that I am a burglar and that you are a poor man and bend all our energies to retaining the services of your cook. As a fellow American I feel for you and I’d hate to see ‘the Madame’ forced to do her own cooking through any fault of mine. By the way, how’s the larder?”
“The who?”
“The larder. What have you to eat?”
“Oh, I misunderstood you. I guess I can find something to eat. Are you fond of blueberries—not whortleberries, you understand, but blueberries.”
“All the same, ain’t they?”
“Not by a long shot. You’re evidently a city man. A blueberry is to a whortleberry what a wild cherry is to an oxheart. We have plenty of blueberries and some milk and I dare say Minerva can boil you some eggs if you care for them.”
“No, I don’t want to bother you or her. Cooks object to getting extra meals.”
I had not thought of that and I deemed it considerate in the burglar.
I led the way to the pantry, where I found a pitcher of rich milk and a pan of berries and when Mrs. Vernon and Minerva came down stairs, the burglar and I sat at the dinner table, eating berries like the best of friends.
“Frightened, Minerva?” asked I with a reassuring smile.
“Yas’r,” was the monosyllabic and therefore reassuring reply.
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Minerva,” said the burglar with an assumption of breeziness that sat very well on him.
Minerva smiled foolishly. She was abashed.
“I missed my way, Tom,” said he, turning to me, “and it’s a wonder I got here at all.”
“Will you please explain why you call me Tom,” said I, giving him a cue, “when my name is Philip Vernon.”
“Simply because I’ve been spending a week with Tom,” said he, “and he is very well indeed.”
“Hasn’t he had any return of those spells?” asked I with mock concern.
“No, Phil, Tom seems to be on the high road to recovery, now. His wife has a Dane for a cook and she makes the best omelets I ever ate. Can you make good omelets?” said he, turning to Minerva, whose eyes were riveted on this easy mannered friend who had reached our house so late.
“Yas’r.”
“Pardon my suggesting it, Mrs. Vernon,” said he, turning to my wife, “but would it be asking too much—”
“Why, I’m sure Minerva would be delighted to cook you an omelet. She knows what it is to be hungry. Don’t you Minerva?”
“Yas’m,” said she, going into the kitchen and setting a match to the fire which was laid in preparation for the morning.
“She looks like a good-natured girl—one who would stick to you through thick and thin,” said the burglar in a tone that would easily reach Minerva’s ears.
“Minerva’s a very good girl,” said Ethel, sitting down in the chair I had drawn up to the table.
We talked on various topics, much as if we had known each other for years, but this was due more to the burglar’s absolute ease of manner than to any self command on our parts. When Minerva came in with a smoking hot omelet he said,
“Handsomest omelet I ever saw. If it tastes like that I’ll eat every bit myself. You’re a born cook, Minerva.”
Minerva grinned and went into the pantry whence she emerged with bread and butter.
As for the burglar he kept up a running fire of talk about supposed friends of ours.
“Rather sad, that accident to Tom’s nephew, wasn’t it?” said he.
“I hadn’t heard of it,” said Ethel, while I admitted a like ignorance.
“Is that so? Tom is no letter writer. Why little Sanderson fell down an elevator shaft and ripped all the buttons off his shoes.”
He said this so seriously that it was all Ethel could do to keep a straight face.
“And Mary has finally decided to accept Jim Larkins. Seventeen times she had rejected him. Do you think they’ll be happy?”
“I hope they will,” said I, and then to make conversation I said,
“What’s become of Ed. Cortelyou?”
“I’m sorry to say,” said the burglar, with a long face, “that Ed.’s gone to the bad. It doesn’t pay to trust a young man with unlimited money. If I ever succeed in amassing a fortune—not that I feel especially encouraged just now—but if I ever do, I will tie it up so that Charley can not play ducks and drakes with it.”
“By the way, do you expect Charley to follow your profession?” said Ethel wickedly and unexpectedly.
The burglar helped himself to the rest of the omelet with a roguish grin and said,
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Kate is all for having him study for the ministry, but I’ve seen enough misery endured by young ministers whose hearts were not in their work and who were perhaps tortured by this modern spirit of doubt, and I tell her that the profession that was good enough for his father is good enough for him.”
There seemed to be something fascinating in the clear-cut tones of the burglar’s voice for Minerva stood in the kitchen listening intently to every word.
“I hope you will enjoin on him the necessity of being honest,” said Ethel with evident enjoyment.
“Example is better than precept, Mrs. Vernon,” said he, looking her straight in the eyes. “I’m not much of a preacher myself. I sometimes say to him, ‘Do as you see me do, my boy, but try to do it better.’ I do hope to enable him to make an easy entry into the homes of really good people. I tell him that it’s not always the richest who are the most valuable. He may be able to pick up something from a man who is comparatively poor, but who has good taste, and I tell him always to keep his eyes and ears open when he is in the houses of others, because there is no telling how profitable a good use of eyes and ears may be. The boy has quite a taste for rare china. He’s managed to get hold of some handsome pieces.”
“Do you allow him much spending money?” asked I with a deprecating smile.
“No, I don’t give him any stated sum, but he has his own ways of adding to his income. I believe in making a boy self reliant. He wasn’t over six when I gave him a little boost up the ladder as a starter, and told him to remember to rise superior to circumstances, and he made quite a comfortable nest egg. Went into the hen business. Selected his own hens and sold them at a profit. A boy that learns to be self reliant is years ahead of a boy who is pampered. Minerva, that was the best omelet I ever ate. I wish I could stay here and eat one of your breakfasts, but, Philip, if I expect to get to the McLeod’s to-night, I’ll have to be going right along. You see I expected to get here in time to dine with you, and leave about eleven, but I lost my way, and I know the Major will be expecting me and he won’t go to bed until I come. I’m awfully sorry to go.”
As he rose from the table I noticed the bag containing his plunder. Unless Minerva was an absolute innocent she would suspect that all was not right when he picked it up, but luckily at that moment she went out to the pantry to put away the milk, or something, and during her absence he picked it up with great nonchalance and walked out of the room, bowing to Ethel, who made a little gesture of repugnance when the real nature of his work was brought home to her in so concrete a manner.
I followed him out to the front door, where he deposited the bag on the step and said very suggestively,
“I believe I’ll give Minerva a tip if you have no objection. She deserves it.”
“Why, I have no objection,” said I, “but it isn’t necessary.”
“Pardon me if I differ,” said he, good naturedly, holding out his hand.
And then I understood that I was being held up.
“How much do you want to give her,” said I, wishing now that he was far away.
But his demand was very reasonable—comparatively speaking,—for he said,
“I think that five dollars and a quarter would be a fair amount for me to give. She may not get every cent, but I’ve talked a good deal to-night and the laborer is worthy of his hire. You’re a decent sort of fellow, or I might increase the amount.”
“You’ll have to come up stairs for it,” said I, “I never carry much in my pajamas.”
He followed me up stairs, his eyes roving all over the place.
“There must be a lot of high thinking done in this establishment,” said he, as he looked at the sparsely decorated walls.
“It was a high old thought to get you to pose as my friend. If Minerva stays with us I’ll think of you, and I wish that you might be induced to—”
“Don’t, that’s cant. You may think you mean it, but you don’t. If you read in to-morrow’s paper that I had been arrested, you wouldn’t drop one tear. You live your life, and I’ll live mine. If you ever have a chance to do a man a good turn, go ahead and do it, but I won’t lie awake nights wondering whether you’ve done it or not.”
“No, I suppose you’re not given to lying awake nights, but you may lie awake days and ponder on a good many things.”
“Don’t you believe it, my Christian friend,” said the burglar as we walked back to the kitchen, “I sleep the sleep of the just, and the reason I’m just, is because I never rob a man that I know to be poor.”
We had now come down stairs again, and he went out into the kitchen, and I heard him say to Minerva,
“Minerva, here’s some silver to add to your collection. And don’t ever make the mistake of leaving the Vernons. They are the salt of the earth. They may not be rich, but I am sure they’re kind, and if you know when you’re well off you’ll stay with them. I’ve known Mr. Vernon ever since he was a boy, and if I was looking for a position like yours I’d try to get one with him. And Mrs. Vernon is just as good. You stay by them and they’ll stay by you.”
“’Deed I will,” said Minerva with the unction of one who has felt a revival of religious feeling at a camp meeting. The burglar had actually aroused in her a sense of loyalty.
I was sorry to see him go. I’ve known many an honest man who wasn’t half as interesting, and I’ve known many an interesting man who was not much more honest, although I never had any words with a confessed burglar before. I actually found myself saying “Good luck to you,” as he shouldered his bag and went off down the tree-bordered road in the silver moonlight.
NEXT morning we slept late, but when Mrs. Vernon and I finally awoke we heard no sounds in the kitchen.
“I have a headache,” said Ethel. “That midnight supper didn’t agree with me.”
“Why you didn’t eat anything.”
“No, but I can’t sit up late and feel good for anything in the morning. I suppose Minerva feels the same as I do.”
“Yes, but as she is paid to forget her feelings, I suppose she’ll get up and get breakfast.”
“Do you mind calling her?” asked Ethel, and again donning my dressing gown I went to the foot of the stairs and called,
“Minerva! Minerva, it’s half past eight o’clock.”
No answer.
I went up stairs and stood outside her door.
“Minerva, it’s time to get up. I know you must be sleepy, but it’s half past eight.”
“Mist. Vernon,” came a languid response, “I don’ feel like I could cook this morning, I’m so tired.”
What was this? Was it insubordination? Perhaps it was, but I did not mean to recognise it as such. Who had prepared the midnight supper without a word? Minerva. Was I one to forget benefits conferred? No. Did I want to keep Minerva at all hazards? Yes. Was it wise to let Ethel know of the state of affairs? No.
Therefore I came softly down the stairs and going out into the kitchen, I built a fire and then went to work as dexterously as I could to cook things for breakfast. I poured a cup of cold water on three cups of oatmeal flakes and set them to boil, and while I waited for the water to attend to business I got a book and read. Really, this cooking is no such hardship as I had supposed, thought I. I was not as quick as Minerva, for I was an hour getting the oatmeal to a point where it looked palatable, and I made some mistake of proportions in making the coffee, but I sliced the bread very well, indeed, and I set the table without nicking a plate, and at last I put a half dozen eggs into the water in the double boiler and went up stairs to announce breakfast. Ethel had fallen asleep. I woke her and told her that I believed breakfast was ready. Then I went down to my book again.
Ethel can hurry upon occasion, and she was no time in coming down. But quick as she was, I was quicker, for I had the eggs on the table before she appeared, and when she came into the room we sat down together with never a suspicion on her part that Minerva had not prepared the breakfast. I felt the way I used to feel when I was a boy and used to do something a little beyond my supposed powers. My bosom swelled with pride as I reflected that every bit of the breakfast had been prepared by me.
Ethel uncovered the oatmeal dish and then she said, rather irrelevantly, I thought,
“What’s the matter with Minerva?”
“Nothing, dear,” said I, reaching out my hand for my portion.
Her only answer was to ring the bell.
“—Er—I believe Minerva is upstairs,” said I.
“What has she been doing to the oatmeal?” said Ethel, poking at it with her spoon, but not attempting to taste the stiff-looking mass.
“Fact is, Ethel,” said I, “Minerva is a little upset by last night’s disturbance, and I cooked the breakfast.”
“You mean you didn’t cook it,” said Ethel, with just a touch of sarcasm.
“Well, what I didn’t do, I didn’t do for you. I thought you’d had enough of the kitchen, and if you disguise this with sugar and cream it will be all right.”
But this was an exaggeration. We could not pretend to eat the gluey mass, so I said,
“Well, anyhow, there are nice fresh eggs. It doesn’t take a great deal of skill to boil them.”
“Did you use the three-minute glass,” said Ethel, as she helped me to two eggs and then took two herself.
I told her that I didn’t know what she meant; that I used no glass at all, but had boiled them in the under part of the oatmeal boiler, as I had noticed Minerva do.
“Yes, but how long?” asked Ethel, as she took up her knife and chipped the shell of one.
“About an hour and a half,” said she, answering her own question. “You meant well, Philip, but you didn’t know. These are as hard as a rock and not yet cold. I hope the coffee is better.”
Ethel is not usually so fault finding, but I laid it to her broken sleep, and said,
“The bread is cut pretty well. And the butter is just as good as if Minerva had put it on the table herself.”
“Yes, the bread and butter are quite a success, Phil, but this coffee—”
“Mild?” said I, taking my cue from the color of it as she poured.
“I should say so. It looks like a substitute for coffee.”
“Then I guess I don’t care for any,” said I. “But anyhow, you didn’t have to do any of the preparing, and we’ll leave it for Minerva to wash the dishes.”
I helped myself to milk and managed to eat an egg, but they are not very good when hot and hard, unless they are sliced and reposing on a bed of spinach.
I began to feel a little hot myself that Minerva should have led me to this successful exposure of incompetence, and leaving the table I went up stairs and called out somewhat angrily,
“Minerva, we’re all through breakfast and you’ll have to come right down and prepare lunch, as nothing has been fit to eat.”
A snore was the only response that she gave, and I was glad she had not heard me. One cannot afford to be peremptory if one has but one string to one’s bow. I came down stairs again.
Ethel was in the kitchen frying some eggs and preparing some more coffee.
“Is she coming down?” asked she.
“Er—no—she’s tired. But Ethel, I can’t have you getting breakfast. I’ve already got one, and although it wasn’t a success, we’d better make it do. You look tired out after the excitement of last night. Let’s eat some berries and drink a glass of milk and wait for lunch. Wasn’t that burglar funny last night?”
“Philip, are you going to let Minerva stay in bed all day?” said Ethel.
I sat down on the kitchen table and said,
“Ethel, would you like to be waked up in the middle of the night and forced to prepare an extra meal? Minerva is a human being and she is tired. You’re a human being and you’re tired. Let us let Minerva spend this one day in bed taking the rest cure, and after we’ve eaten this second breakfast, which smells pretty good, we’ll spend the day out doors.”
“But Minerva is insubordinate.”
“Very well, let us call it that. Suppose we suppress her insubordination and she works for us all day and takes the evening train for New York, will the thought that we have suppressed insubordination in a cook get us a new servant? Insubordination in the city, where there are whole intelligence offices filled with girls looking for new places, is a thing that I can’t and won’t stand; but insubordination, with Mamie Logan sick with scarlet fever and no other girl in the world that I know of, is a thing to be coddled, as you might say. Call it weariness caused by over-service and it immediately becomes a thing that we can pardon. Do you want to pack up and go back to New York?”
Ethel assured me that she did not.
“Well, then, don’t let us talk any more about insubordination. We’ll eat what you set before us, asking no questions, and then we’ll go out for a long walk.”
We went out for a long walk, and both of us succeeded by sheer will power in forgetting that Minerva existed. We made believe that we could live on the delicious air that blew so gently at us, and for two or three hours we wandered or sat still, or Ethel sketched and we were thoroughly happy.
It was about noon when we returned to the house. We heard loud voices and stopped to listen.
“I tell you he was a frien’ of Mist. Vernon’s,” we heard Minerva say.
“Well, then, Mr. Vernon has a thief for a friend.”
We exchanged meaning glances. Our friend of the night before had evidently been traced as far as our house. There was nothing to do but to go forward and accept the inevitable.
I went into the kitchen, followed by Ethel. A large, determined looking man was sitting on a chair in the middle of the floor; by his side stood a strapping mulatto, and Minerva, stopped midway in her dishwashing and with something of sleepiness still in her eyes, was standing by the stove.
“How are you?” This from me.
“Good morning. My name is Collins, and I’m a constable. The Fayerweather’s house was robbed last night and the thief got away with the goods.”
I assumed a look of great unconcern, but I felt that Minerva was devouring me with her eyes.
“That’s bad,” said I.
“Yes, it’s bad, but it might be worse. I find that he came as far as here, and your girl says that you entertained him with a midnight supper. Where is he now; hiding?”
His tone was insolent, and my tone was correspondingly dignified.
“Why, I haven’t the slightest idea where the thief that robbed the Fayerweather’s is now,” said I, wishing with all my heart that the constable was on his vacation at some pleasant summer resort, far, far away.
“Minerva,” said I, trying to take the bull by the horns, “what makes you say that I entertained a thief last night?”
“I didn’ say so, Mist. Vernon. This ge’man said that a man, now—robbed that house, an’ ast me if we had a mid—a midnight vis’ter; an’ I said no one but your frien’ that I cooked the om’let for; an’ he ast me how he looked, an’ I told him it couldn’ be him, because you an’ him was great frien’s, an’ I knowed you wasn’ no frien’s with a burglar.”
“Hm,” said I, wondering why in thunderation I had been placed in such an unpleasant position as this, solely through my well-meant efforts to keep Minerva contented.
“Did you entertain a friend here after midnight, last night?” asked the constable, who seemed a painfully direct sort of individual.
“There was a man came here late last night, and we had a little chat together, and a—a little supper, you might call it.”
I paused and looked at Ethel. She was the color of a carnation.
“Go on,” said the constable.
At this I remembered my dignity, and again stood upon it.
“Why should I go on? Who are you to cross-question me in this way?”
“I am the constable, as I said before, and I consider it very suspicious that you should be visited by a man who had a bag that jingled, at midnight.”
“Why shouldn’t it jingle at midnight?” said I with a desperate attempt to impart a tone of lightness to the conversation. “If I choose to give a meal to a wayfarer with a jingling bag, I suppose it is my own concern.”
“Mist. Vernon, he warn’t no tramp. He was a good dresser,” said Minerva, looking at me reproachfully.
“Was—this—man—a—friend—of—yours—or—not?” asked the constable doggedly.
“He was a friend of mine last night,” said I, thinking of the debt of gratitude I felt I owned him when he went away.
“Did you suspect him of being a thief?” said the constable, in such a casual way that without thinking I said “Yes.”
Minerva’s arms had been folded on her breast. They dropped to her side. Ethel slipped behind the constable and went into the parlour—to cool her red cheeks, I suppose.
It was certainly a very unpleasant position for both of us, and I felt that my white lies were coming home to roost way ahead of roosting time.
“Did he give you a part of the spoils as a reward for having fed him?”
“No, sir.” This indignantly.
“He didn’t give you this?” said he, pulling out of his pocket a silver vase.
“No.”
At this Minerva actually began to sob. “Oh, Mist. Vernon, how could you say that? I found that vase in the kitchen this morning, and this man says it was stolen from them people. Oh, why did I come up here?”
“Philip, you might as well tell the whole story,” said Ethel, coming back from the parlour. “We’ll probably lose Minerva now, anyway.”
“So there is a story,” said the constable, crossing his legs in a most irritating way. In fact he couldn’t have done anything that would not have been irritating.
I saw that the best thing to do was to tell the truth, ridiculous as it might sound with Minerva there. Indeed, the very fact of my telling it might soften the girl and show her how much we were willing to descend in our efforts to keep her valuable services. But I made a wrong start. I said:
“I knew that the man was a burglar—”
Minerva immediately burst out sobbing and left the kitchen and went to her room, and my mental eye could see her remorselessly packing her trunk.
“Go on,” said the constable, and then, “Go outside,” said he to the mulatto.
“Well, now that they’ve gone,” said I in a relieved tone, “I can tell you the whole thing, farcical as it is. Have you a servant?”
“My wife has a hired girl. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Do you have trouble in keeping her?”
“We have trouble in keeping them. It’s one after another. They all get the itch for the mills or the stores.”
“Good! Then you’ll understand me,” said I, and I told him the whole story, going on to say:
“When we were roused by this burglar, and I realized that Minerva would throw up her position if she was unduly startled, I resolved to throw myself on the burglar’s mercy, and ask him to pose as my friend, so as to deceive Minerva. It worked all right, or would have worked all right if you hadn’t come here to upset her worse than ever. She’s probably packing her trunk, now—”
“By Godfrey, I’m sorry,” said the constable, who seemed a very decent sort of fellow, now that I knew him better.
“You may well be sorry,” said I, with considerably more spirit than I had yet shown. “Of course, I understand that you are doing your duty, but it’s always best to come to headquarters in an affair of this kind. You got only a garbled version from Minerva. I have given you the facts. The burglar evidently left that cup by mistake, and the Fayerweathers are welcome to it. I’m sure I never want to see it again. It would be a perpetual reminder of our loss of Minerva.”
The constable rose. “It’s a durned shame,” said he, “but of course I didn’t know anything about you. So then you don’t know where the burglar went after he left here?”
I hesitated. It did not seem honourable to tell even the little I knew about the man who had been my guest.
“He went out the front door,” said I, “but where he is now I haven’t the shadow of a suspicion.”
The constable opened the kitchen door. “Come along, Jim,” said he.
Then he took his leave.
Overhead Minerva was preparing for the same thing.
IN the back hallway, up stairs, there was a long wooden chest, half full of old magazines. Behind it mice had established a home. I did not know this at the time, but was to learn it a few minutes after the constable left.
We stood in the kitchen, Ethel and I, listening to the heavy foot-falls of Minerva. She was evidently packing her trunk. Suddenly there came a mewing at the kitchen door, and I opened it for the entrance of Miss Pussy, who made a bee line for up stairs, one of her hunting grounds.
“We might hide Miss Pussy,” said I, “and then Minerva wouldn’t go.”
Minerva’s voice has a penetrating quality, and in a minute we could hear her making a confidant of Miss Pussy.
“Miss Pussy, you an’ me is go’n’ back to the lovely city. Country’s ba-ad ’nough, but livin’ with the frien’s of burglars is wuss. What you want, Miss Pussy?”
The voice came out into the hall; Minerva had evidently followed the cat out.
“Yeah, you’ll get a mouse behin’ there. You wait—”
We heard a grunt such as some people make when they lift something heavy, and then a characteristic chuckle, and then a half agonized,
“Ooh, come out, come out, Miss Pussy. You’ll git squished. I can’t hold it. Come out.”
“What is happening now?” said I to Ethel.
“Oh, some of her tomfoolery. I’m out of patience with her.”
“Mist. Vernon! Mist. Vernon! quick! qui-i-ck! I can’t hol’ much longer! Pussy’ll be squished!”
I rushed up those familiar stairs, followed by Ethel, and there stood Minerva, her eyes nearly popping out of her head as she tried with bare success to hold up the heavy chest full of magazines.
Of the cat nothing was to be seen except a twitching tail that told me she was underneath the chest watching a mouse in calm obliviousness of the fact that her mistress was using all her strength in an effort to save her from becoming only a map of a cat.
“Hold on a minute,” I cried, rushing to her assistance, but just as I reached her the chest slipped from her fingers.
But a cat with all its nine lives fresh within its young frame, is not easily “squished,” even by so heavy a thing as a chest full of magazines, and Miss Pussy’s body darted out just in time. Not so the tip of her tail which, whisking behind her as she turned to rush out, was caught between chest and floor, and acted like a push button on a call bell, for she emitted a continuous yawp that lasted until I had lifted the chest again.
Cats generally see where they are going, but Miss Pussy had been looking behind her at the spectacle of her imprisoned tail, and when I released her she sprang high in the air and landed compactly and dexterously on a sheet of sticky fly paper.
Never can I forget the look she gave us over her shoulder as her feet struck the gluey mass. To give herself a leverage by which to pull her dainty fore-paws out of the entanglement, she sat down—temporarily, as she thought—permanently, as the fly paper decided.
We were sorry for the cat, but being Americans we gave ourselves over to mirth at the picture she presented. The pencil of a Frost is needed to adequately represent her agonized twisting on the sticky sheet. At last, by a Herculean effort, she extricated her fore paws and walking glue-ily to the head of the stairs she dragged herself along on the fly paper as if she were part sled, part cat. Coming to the head of the stairs she attempted to walk down in the manner of trick cats, but not being used to the exercise she turned a series of summersaults instead, and landed at the foot so completely enmeshed in sticky fly paper that it would have been a small fly, indeed, who could have found a place for his own little feet upon its yellow surface.
I have often derided the witless persons who found amusement in what I call pantomime catastrophes, but this simple conjunction of cat and fly paper was as funny as anything I ever looked at.
“It’ll spoil her nice fur,” said Minerva, running down stairs after the cat and overtaking her at the kitchen door, which I had fortunately closed. A sympathetic hand picked up the papered cat and attempted to divorce her from her adhesive mantle, but when I came down it looked to me as if there were far more fur on the “tanglefoot” than Pussy had herself, and the ungrateful animal had scratched her benefactress as well as she could with glue covered talons. Then spitting and swearing, Miss Pussy dashed through the kitchen window, not waiting for it to be opened, and went to her first retreat, where she remained for the rest of the day, ridding herself, after the manner of cats, of as much as she could of the flies’ last resting place.
It suddenly occurred to me that the time was ripe for more diplomacy, that even now, at the eleventh hour, I might save Minerva to the house of Vernon, and things would continue to go on as smoothly—as before.
“Minerva, you saved Miss Pussy’s life by holding on as you did,” said I. (I said nothing about her asininity in lifting the chest for Miss Pussy to creep under it.)
“Might as well be dead as all gawmed up with that fly paper stuff.”
“Well, she has a cat’s tongue, and she knows how to use it. She’ll be as sleek as sealskin by to-night. Minerva!”
“Yas’r.”
“Minerva, if I raised your wages, do you think you’d stay with us? Of course, you know I never saw that man until last night.”
“Then how’d he know so much about them children and all them people?”
“That was just his funny way. He was making believe—just—just to make talk. But you haven’t answered my question. ‘Would you stay if I raised your wages?’”
“How much?”
There was no use in my being mealy mouthed now, and so I flung economy to the four winds of heaven and said:
“Thirty dollars a month.”
Minerva gasped. The bait was in her throat.
“Thirty dollars a month right through the summer,” said I.
“I’ll stay, Mist. Vernon, jes to help you out, but I do hate the country and the night time. If it was all day long all the time, I could stan’ it. If I could git to bed about eight o’clock, I wouldn’t mind it so much, but you have dinner so late, I don’t get the dishes washed in time.”
I pondered, and just then Ethel came into the kitchen.
“Ethel, Minerva is going to stay with us for the summer, but she is afraid of the dark, and thinks that if we could have dinner earlier she would like it better.”
Ethel sniffed. She sniffed disdainfully.
“When would you like to have it, Minerva?” said I, hoping that the sniffing would cease. Sniffs are not a part of diplomacy, by any means.
“If you had it at five o’clock, I’d get to bed at eight.”
“Five o’clock is ridiculous,” burst out Ethel. I looked at her warningly, but she did not pay any attention to my signal.
“No, Minerva,” said she. “Six o’clock is plenty early enough.”
“Well,” said Minerva, actually putting her hands on her hips, a new attitude for her, “I’m on’y staying now to oblige, and I’ll have to go back, I reckon.”
Now this was a little too much, but for the sake of keeping her and the health of my wife at any cost, I said:
“Well, Minerva, I suppose that in spite of Mrs. Vernon’s objection to the hour we’ll have dinner at five, but I tell you plainly that it is because I do not want Mrs. Vernon to be left without a servant.”
“You’re a very ungrateful girl, Minerva,” said Ethel with a strange lack of tact. “Mr. Vernon has put up with a great deal from you, and you act as if you were ill treated.”
“I’m kep’ a prisoner in the country, an’ that’s ill treatment all right,” said Minerva, sullenly, and I motioned to Ethel and we left the kitchen together.
NEXT morning was a pleasant one, and as soon as breakfast was over I went out into the kitchen and told Minerva that if her friend did not delay, her musical instrument ought to arrive by Friday. I found her in her usual state of good temper.
“That little place where you were sewing, out there in the woods, will be a very good spot in which to play it,” said I suggestively.
“Oh, I kin play it anywheys,” said she with a kindling glance, that bespoke the artist of temperament, absolute master of his instrument. So Paderewski might speak of his ability to play a piano in a drawing-room car.
That morning I had a notion to go fishing, and I asked Ethel to join me, but she said she was tired, and laughed as she said it. Of course Minerva was the real reason.
“I wish that houses were automatic,” said I, “so that they could run themselves. Just think how nice it would be to have a house fitted to run by steam all day long, by simply dropping a five dollar gold piece in the slot in the morning.”
“How expensive,” said the economical Ethel.
“I don’t think so,” said I, “there’s many a housekeeper who would be willing to give up many things if five dollars a day would bring relief from household sorrows. ‘No servants needed. A child can run it. Can be fitted to any house. Gas or electric or steam motive power. Not half the danger from explosions that went with the old system when servants were liable to go off at any moment. Come to our warerooms and see a large house running by itself.’ There’s a fortune in the idea.”
“Well, you have the idea,” said Ethel. “Go sell it.”
“No, I’m going fishing.”
The great advantage that fishing has over some sports is that one does not need ability or paraphernalia of any sort beyond those of the most primitive type. Your hammer-thrower needs brawn, your chess player brains, your golf player a caddy—and a vocabulary, but anyone can go fishing. Of course there is a great difference between going fishing and catching fish, and I am one of that large army that goes fishing and returns from fishing as innocent of fish as at the moment of departure.
But to the man with eyes, there are many things besides fish that he can catch, and, although no hint of a nibble came to my patient fingers, I reveled in the day and would have stayed longer if I had not felt anxious about Ethel and Minerva. What could they do to amuse each other, with me away?
I made my pleasant way back up the hills, so reminiscent of Scotch scenery, and knew very well the sarcasms that would greet me when I acknowledged that I had possessed no magnetism over the fish. Ethel always has a store of amiable causticisms for me when I come back from a fishless expedition.
When I returned I found the house empty and the gluey Miss Pussy shut up and miaowing in the kitchen. I was startled at first. I had come up by way of the pine grove, and there was no one there. I called my loudest and no one answered. Had Minerva obliged Ethel to get a horse and wagon and take her to the station in my absence? It looked like it. The fire was nearly out, the dishes all washed, the floor freshly mopped. That was it. Minerva had swept and garnished the house and had then left it, and in a short time Ethel would come back disconsolate, and then—why, then we would pack up and go back ourselves.
The only thing that did not fit in with my conjecture was the presence of Miss Pussy. It did not seem as if Minerva would go away and leave her precious cat.
I heard a rattle of wheels. Bert Dalton was going to the village. I would go down with him and ride back with Ethel. She had probably hired the Stevens’ horse. I hurried out and hailed Bert, and he stopped.
“Going to the village?”
“Yes, sir, want anything got?”
I explained the situation, and joined him, and we were soon out of sight of the house. I looked at my watch. If we hurried I could yet get to the station before the train for New York came in. I told Bert so, and he quickened the horse’s pace.
About half a mile on our way I heard some one calling for help. Bert heard the call, too, and just as I was going to say “stop,” he stopped of his own accord. We both jumped out. The noise came from a field on our right, mostly given over to blueberry bushes, but with a little timber on its farther edge.
“Help! Murder!” It was a high-keyed woman’s voice.
“Tramps,” said Bert, as we hurried on.
“Hysterics,” said I, for I was sure I heard laughter alternating with the screams. And the laughter had a strangely familiar sound.
On we ran, the screams continuing, and at last the sounds were located, that is, the screams were. They came from a low growing chestnut. Perched in its branches sat Minerva, her face the image of horror, and below on a fallen trunk sat Ethel, laughing, with the tears rolling down her cheeks. By her side were two tin pails, nearly full of blueberries.
“Minerva, stop that screaming. I tell you she won’t hurt you,” said Ethel, and then went off into another fit of laughter, and Minerva yelled blue murder again.
Neither had seen us.
“Come up here, Mis. Vernon. He’ll kill you, shu’s you’ bawn.”
“She’s gone away. You’ve frightened her. Come down.”
“Oh, Lawdy! Lawdy! Lawdy! Why’d I come? He’ll shu’ly kill us.”
When we saw that the danger was imaginary, I signalled to Bert, and we both stepped out of sight of Minerva and Mrs. Vernon, in order to see the comedy. Ethel’s perfect calmness and her amusement, but slightly tinged with sympathy, formed such a striking contrast to Minerva’s abject fear. Who was this he-she that was threatening Minerva’s existence?
There was a rustling in the bushes, Minerva’s screams redoubled, and in spite of her 180 pounds she climbed still higher into the tree.
And then the cause of all the commotion showed “himself.” A mild-looking Jersey cow, all unconscious of the agony she was causing, came into view and advanced toward Ethel, sniffing.
“Don’t you overturn our berries,” said my wife, walking toward the creature. The cow was evidently a pet, for as Ethel put out her hand to shoo her away she sniffed expectantly and put out her tongue in hope of receiving some little delicacy.
This so terrified Minerva that she took another step upward, put her faith in a recreant limb, and, just as Bert and I discovered ourselves to Ethel, our “cook lady” fell out of the tree and landed smack on the cow, who kindly broke her fall and then broke into a run, kicking her heels and waving her tail, after the manner of her species.
Minerva was not hurt, thanks to the cow, but she was much agitated, and it was some time before we could make her listen to the words of wisdom that all three poured forth with generous ease.
“It was such a lovely day, we thought we’d go berrying,” said Ethel. “You got my note, I suppose.”
“No, I did not. I made up my mind that you were taking Minerva to the train, and as Bert passed by just then, I came down with him in order to go back with you.”
“Then how came you here?” asked Ethel.
“How came we here? How came we here? Why those screams went beyond Mount Nebo. You’ll see people pouring over the edge of it in a few minutes. Such shrieks I never heard outside of a mad house. I thought it was Indians.”
Minerva’s agitation had now taken the form of sobbing, and as she mopped her face with her apron it began to dawn upon her that she had not been in danger until she took to the tree. She helped herself to a handful of berries, and they seemed to do her good, for she listened to Ethel’s account of what had happened and punctuated it with what at first were chuckles, and when the humour of the thing had soaked in far enough were her irresistible guffaws, so provocative of laughter in others.
“We were picking berries and enjoying ourselves very much when I heard a rustling and looked up, and there was a cow. I said rather hastily, ‘Oh, look,’ and Minerva looked and screamed out, ‘It’s a bear,’ and before I could tell her what it was she had gone up that tree as if she had lived in the country all her life. She begged of me to come up with her, but I got over my fear of cows some time ago.” This with a conscious blush, for Ethel knew that in times past she, too, had fled from a cow.
I turned to Minerva. “Do you mean to tell me that you never saw a cow before? There are cows in the city.”
“I never saw one.”
“Haven’t you seen pictures of them on groceries?”
“I spec I have, but comin’ thataway at me it looked like a bear.”
“Very like a bear,” said I. “Well, it’s lucky you weren’t hurt. You can thank the cow that you didn’t break your back. I hope you didn’t break hers.”
She went off into yells of laughter at this mild bit of humour, and cheerfulness now being restored, I thanked Bert for giving me a lift and told him I didn’t care to go any farther.
He left us and we went on picking berries, and before the pail was full Minerva had a chance to pat the fearsome beast that had so nearly frightened her to death. Now that she knew it was merely a cow, the source of the milk and cream of which she was so fond, she had no fear at all, being in that respect different from Ethel, who in the beginning had feared cows because they were cows, just as certain other women fear mice because they are mice, and as Lord Roberts fears a cat because it is a cat and not “the enemy.”
The whistle at the Wharton Paper Mill told us it was twelve o’clock, and like hungry mill hands we started for home. Minerva walked ahead with both pails, and Ethel and I followed.
Half way up Minerva burst into song.
“How volatile!” said I.
“The worst is over. We’ll have no more trouble with her,” said Ethel.
So lightly do we attempt to read the future.
THAT afternoon Bert brought an express package to Minerva.
To her it was a package of sunlight.
In fact it was the accordeon.
As soon as Minerva opened the bundle she stopped cooking dinner and began to play on her beloved instrument. Such sounds I had hoped never to hear again, and I went out into the kitchen and told her that I was sorry, but that I could not stand it in the house.
She looked up from the instrument, and there was a world of appeal in her eyes. I had never seen so much expression in them. Music certainly had power over her.
“Oh, Mist. Vernon, it’ll be dark after the dishes is washed, an’ I don’ dah go in the woods,” said she. “I’ll play sof’.”
“Yes, but you’ll delay dinner.”
She actually came over and laid her brown hand on my sleeve.
“Mist. Vernon,” said she, in honey tones, “I’m on’y gettin’ dinner at five to please myse’f. If I git it at six Mis. Vernon will like it better. She said so. I won’t play long.”
But I was determined not to listen to such music as that in the house. So I went out doors.
Ethel was sitting at the window of her bedroom. When she saw me she put her hands to her ears and made a grimace.
I made signs to her to come down.
“Let us be diplomatic,” said I, when she had come down stairs. “Let us go for a long walk.”
The hideous “upside down music” assailed us until we were fully a half a mile away.
“Ethel,” said I, “we haven’t gone about this matter of keeping Minerva in the right way.”
“Meaning what?” said Ethel.
“Meaning that we are trying to make her like a thing she does not understand. The country is an unknown land to her. We must try to make her acquainted with it, and perhaps she will love it so much that we will have hard work getting her to go back with us.”
“Well, goodness, that is hardly worth striving for,” said Ethel. “There are only three months up here, but there are nine months in the city, and we want her there.”
“Well, we won’t educate her up to that point, then, but we must do something to make her more contented. She is just as much a human being as you and I, and I dare say that her summer is just as much to her as ours is to us. We are depriving her of recreation pier amusements, of ice cream, of band concerts, and what are we giving her in return? We ought to go out and get some one of her own colour to come and call on her.”
“Don’t be absurd, Philip. Minerva is not a farce.”
“No, she is only getting to be a tragedy. But I’m not absurd. Next to Minerva’s love for the city is her love for people. If we can’t make her love the country, we may be able to make her love the people of the country, and I am going to ask Bert if there is not some respectable man or woman who could be hired to come here and call on Minerva every day.”
Ethel looked at me expecting to see a twinkle or so in one or another of my eyes, but I was not thinking of twinkling. I never was so much in earnest. Minerva was plainly sorry that she had been impertinent and I was going to be eminently just.
We dismissed Minerva from our thoughts, or at least I, man-like dismissed her from mine. I don’t suppose that Ethel was able to do so, but we did not talk of her again, preferring to drink in the beauties of nature and call each other’s attention to each draught. Rare is that nature lover who can silently absorb the loveliness of a landscape.
Nor would I laugh at those who call on their companions for corroboration of their views as to views. It is simply another way of sharing delights, and that man who gobbles up a landscape and never comments upon it is not likely to have kept silence from Japanese motives. They say that the Japanese take the appreciation of beauty so much as a matter of course that they never refer to the rapturous tints in an orchard of peach blossoms or the tender greens of a spring landscape, feeling that it would be an insult to invite attention where attention was already bestowed; but with us of the West, when a man refrains from speaking about this lordly oak or that graceful dip of hill, or those clouds dying on the horizon in every conceivable colour, the chances are that he is thinking of his business affairs, and the clouds die and the hills dip and the tree spreads not for him.
Many of these graceful thoughts I expressed in fitting words to Ethel, so it will be seen that our walk was not without interest, and as she in turn said many quotable things, which I now forget, the walk was prolonged until to our astonishment we found that it was seven.
“Hungry as a bear?” asked I.
“Indeed I am. Probably Minerva has been holding dinner in the oven this half hour, and it will not be fit to eat.”
We hastened our steps, and in a few minutes our home burst upon us—also more strains from the accordeon—together with plunks from a banjo.
We heard the plunks before we saw who was supplying them, but in a moment the musician was seen to be seated upon the front verandah.
He was a tall, good-looking mulatto, and I at once recognized him as being the man who had driven the constable over that morning.
Ethel stopped short, and became angry at the same instant. I stopped short and became amused at the same instant, thus showing how the same acts will affect different natures; also showing how a person can do two things at once and do them both well. For there is no question but that our stops were as short as they could have been, and our anger and amusement were well conceived and well carried out.
Ethel was too angry to speak. I was too amused to keep silent.
“It’s scandalous,” said Ethel, as soon as she could find words.
“It’s just right,” said I. “And it has given me a good idea. After dinner I will tell you about it.”
The banjoist had seen us first, and had told Minerva, and both had jumped to their feet, the man to bow and Minerva to run into the kitchen, where she was followed by her friend.
By the time we had come up to the front path to the veranda the coloured man had come out from the kitchen and in most melodious tones said,
“Minerva wanted to know if you would like dinner served on the piazza, the evening being so pleasant.”
Delmonico never had a head waiter with the aplomb, the native dignity, the utter unconsciousness of self that this superbly built man displayed.
I felt that we had suddenly fallen heir to a fortune, and a group of retainers, and trying to play my part to the best of my ability I said,
“By all means—er—”
“James.”
“By all means, James. Is it ready?”
“I will ascertain in a moment sir,” said this yellow prince, and retired to the kitchen, whence he emerged in a moment.
“A slight retention in the oven in regard to the roast, sir, but the soup will be ready immejutly.”
Ethel had gone up stairs at once. I nodded my head gravely and said,
“Very well, James,” and then I went up to make my toilet.
“The tide has turned, Ethel,” said I when I reached the room. “A kind Providence has sent the grandson of some Senegambian king to wait on us and to amuse Minerva between meals. Put a ribbon in your hair, and I will put a buttercup in my button hole, or I will dress, if you say so, and we will put on the style that befits us.”
“Who is that man?” said Ethel.
“In fairy stories wise people never question. They accept. This is the constable’s driver, and he was probably attracted here by the dread strains of the accordeon. Let us make the most of him. I am quite sure he is going to serve dinner, and I feel it in my bones that he will do it well.”
And he did do it well and the dinner was worth serving. It had been delayed by the concert, there was no doubt of that, and it was nearly eight when we sat down to it, but the silent, graceful fellow, moved noiselessly in and out from kitchen to verandah, the whippoorwills sang to us, the roses filled the air with fragrance, and a silver crescent in the west rode to its couch full sleepily.
This may sound poetic. If it does it is because we felt satisfied with everything once more, and satisfaction is poetry.
After the dinner was over Ethel went out into the kitchen about something and found Minerva smiling and bustling around to get the dishes washed in a hurry.
“Mis. Vernon,” said she, “that man wants to know if Mist. Vernon has any work for him to do.”
“That man” was out on the veranda clearing away the dessert dishes.
“I’ll see,” said Ethel. “How did he happen to come here?”
“Why, Mis. Vernon, that man is related with my folks. His aunt’s brother married my aunt’s niece. I don’ know what that makes him to me, but he remembers me when I was a little gal in New York, and he reckernized me as soon as he saw me. He says—”
The approach of James prevented her from saying anything further, but as soon as he had gone out for the coffee cups, she continued:
“He says that he’s on’y be’n workin’ with that policeman while he was manufacturin’ hay, an’ he’d like to do odd jobs.”
“I’m afraid they’ll have to be real odd ones,” said I when Ethel told me what had transpired. “But if it is going to make Minerva contented we will have him come and paint the porch green to-morrow, and red the day after.”
I sat and smoked peacefully for a few minutes. James had taken the last saucer out to the kitchen, and Ethel sat by my side, looking out into the waning light of day.
Suddenly there came the strains of “Roll Jordan, Roll,” in the form of a soprano and bass duet.
Minerva’s playing on the accordeon had not prepared me for the sweetness of her voice, which is perhaps not strange, and of course I knew nothing of James’s capabilities as a vocalist until I heard his rich, mellow baritone blend with her warm soprano.
The effect was delightful. Not since I heard the original Fiske Jubilee singers, twenty-five years ago, when a boy of six or seven, have I heard any negro music that satisfied me as this did.
“Ethel,” said I, “we are It. Is there a local charitable organization or a Village Improvement Society, or a Mother’s Meeting that needs help?”
“What are you after now,” said Ethel.
“Minerva’s pleasure first and foremost, but also the amelioration of the bitter lot of parties at present unknown, by means of a concert to be given at the house of Mrs. Vernon, by James and Minerva.”
“Philip!” said Ethel.
“As near as I can make out,” said I, “I am devoting this summer to the building up of your health by a life in the country, free from cares. To do that we must have a girl, and there is but one girl that we know we can have, and that is the girl we do have. Can’t you imagine how Minerva will take fire at the thought of singing in a concert?”
“I suppose she would like it,” said Ethel, “but how do you know that we can get people to come?”
“We needn’t worry about that part of it at first. First of all we must begin our rehearsals, and they will take time. Do you appreciate that fact? And very first of all, I’ll go out and interview James.”
“Philip,” said Ethel, rising and looking at me with a vexed expression, “I wish you had more dignity. I’ll go out and tell James that you wish to speak to him.”
“Not at all,” said I. “What! You go out and tell him? Wait. Sit where you are, and all will be well.”
I was beginning to feel in holiday mood, for I was sure that I had struck on an arrangement that would tide us over at least a fortnight.
I went out to the kitchen.
“Minerva,” said I, “Mrs. Vernon would like to speak to you.”
I then went back to Ethel and said, “I have asked Minerva to come. When she comes, tell her to send James. We will do this thing in style while we are about it.”
Minerva came in, her face all smiles.
“Minerva, ask your friend James to come out,” said Ethel. “Mr. Vernon wishes to speak to him.”
“That’s it! That’s style!” said I, as soon as Minerva had gone. “Now is our dignity preserved, and James feels that he has fallen among people who know what’s what. Do you want to be present at this interview?”
Ethel decided that she did not, and went into the parlour as James came out of the kitchen.
“Did you want to speak to me, sir?” said James respectfully.
“Yes, James. What is your last name?”
“Mars. James Montgomery Mars.”
“Minerva tells me, James, that you are looking for work.”
“Yes, sir; for congenial work.”
“Would singing be congenial work?”
“Singing’s a pleasure, sir. It ain’t work.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said I, “that what this section needed was a concert for the benefit of something. Now, Mrs. Vernon likes to make other people happy, and while we were listening to you and Minerva sing, it struck us both that a concert of old plantation melodies like those you could sing, would be well received, say at the Congregational Church at Egerton. I would pay you a coachman’s wages for staying here and practising, but all the money taken in would go to—”
“The Hurlbert Hospital. That’s what they always do with the money up here, sir.”
“Oh, I see, like the Liverpool Sailors’ Home.”
He did not understand my allusion, but I did not explain. Allusions that are explained lose half their charm.
“What do you think of the idea?”
“I think it’s all right, sir. But between singing what would I do?”
“Do you love nature?”
“I don’t know’s I know what you intend to mean, sir.”
“Does it make you happy to be out doors?”
“Oh, sure. I’m an out-door boy, all right.”
“Well, Mrs. Vernon, in her desire to benefit humanity—You understand me, James?”
“Oh, I get the words all right. I don’t rightly see your drift.”
“What I want to say is, that Mrs. Vernon wishes to make Minerva love out doors as well as you do, and she is going to teach her some of the things that a country-bred man like you knows by heart. How to tell an oak from a maple at twilight.”
“Oh, that kind has been here before. The Wheelocks, that had this house last year, went out in the woods with these here glasses and they brought things up close with them. They never cared for nature unless they had their glasses.”
“James, I’m afraid it is apt to degenerate into something like that, but—James, if I tell you something, will you respect my confidence?”
“Will you please say that in different words?”
I thought a moment while I chose simpler words.
“Will you say nothing to Minerva, if I tell you something?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Well, this concert and these nature lessons are solely for the purpose of keeping Minerva’s mind off herself and the city. She wants to go back to New York, and we want her to stay here all summer, and—”
I explained it all to him, and the fellow seemed to enter right into the spirit of the thing, and assured me that he would do all he could to help.
“Where do you live?”
“Down in the valley a bit. When shall I show up in the morning?”
“The earlier, the better. I want you and Minerva to begin to practise for the concert right away. Do you sing by note.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, have you any book of negro melodies.”
“No, sir. Wouldn’t do me much good, sir, as I can’t read music.”
“Oh, I thought you said you sang by note.”
“Yes, sir. Note by note, right along. I have a good ear, but I can’t read music.”
“Very well, James. Come in the morning prepared to sing note by note, by ear, anything you can remember. Do you know ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot?’”
“Indeed I do. Oh, I know all the jubilee songs, and all the rag-time songs, and I guess we can fill up a couple of hours singin’ in the old Congregational Church.”
He chuckled.
“What is it, James?”
“Why, I was thinkin’ that here the white folks sing down there every Sunday in the church, and if I care to go an’ hear them it don’t cost me a cent, but if Minerva and me sing there in that same church, the white folk’ll have to pay money to hear us. ‘Tain’t gen’elly that way.”
THE next morning was one of those days that sometimes come in the summer, when the most desirable thing to do is to sleep. The air was soft and damp, and sleep inviting, and when something awoke me at six o’clock, I drowsily looked at my watch and dreamily realized that I was not compelled to catch any train, but could sink into delightful unconsciousness once more.
Just what had waked me I did not know, but before I went off again I heard the voice of James out doors, and then I heard the voice of Minerva, evidently at her open window, saying:
“I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
And then I dropped off, to be awakened again in what seemed like a moment by these beautiful words:
“Oh, de debbil he t’ought he had me fas’.
Le’ my people go.
But I t’ought I’d break his chains at las’,
Le’ my people go.
Go down Moses, way down in Egypt la-an’,
Tell ol’ Phar’o’ fo’ to le’ my people go.”
It was melodious, it was harmonious, but it was also six o’clock in the morning.
“Oh, won’t they stop,” said Ethel, sleepily.
“Not by my command,” said I. “They are practising for the concert.”
“Oh, I’m so sleepy! What time is it?”
“Oh, ’twas a dark an’ stormy night,
Le’ my people go;
When Moses an’ the Israelite,
Le’ my people go.”
“Make them go,” said Ethel, her eyes wide open, but her mouth passing from the words to a yawn.
“And it’s such a beautiful morning to sleep,” said I.
But as verse after verse rolled out sonorously, sleep fled from the room in dismay, and we followed, and for the first time since we had come to the country, found ourselves as one might say, up before breakfast. The morning air was delightful, but we knew the danger that lurks in morning air on empty stomachs—or we thought we knew it. If there is no danger in such exposures I make my humble apology to those who hold the contrary opinion. Personally I do not know what is right to do—that is, hygienically right to do, at any given moment.
May I be forgiven for digressing at this point, in order that I may touch on a topic that has been near my heart for a long time, but has never had a chance for utterance before. I was brought up to believe that water with meals was a very bad thing, so I went without water at meals, and thrived like a green bay tree.
One day a doctor told me that water with meals was the one thing needed to bring out the tonic properties of food.
I immediately began to drink water with my meals in perfect trust and confidence, and—I continued to thrive like a green bay tree.
When I was a boy, I was told that tomatoes were exceedingly bad; that they had no nutritive qualities, and that it was but a few short years since they had been called “love apples” and had rightly been considered poisonous.
With unquestioning faith I refrained from eating the juicy vegetables and remained free from all the diseases that follow in their train. I had not tasted a tomato, and I did not know what I was losing.
One day when feeling a little off my feed, a young doctor friend said, “What you need is the acid of a tomato.”
With an unfaltering trust I approached a tomato and ate it and realized the many, many years that were irrevocably gone; years in which I might have eaten the succulent fruit—for a tomato is a fruit; there’s no question of it.
After that day I made a point of eating tomatoes whenever I could and I remained free from the diseases that had been said to follow in their train.
I blindly follow the dictum of the last doctor who speaks and it is to that fact that I attribute my good health.
I read somewhere not long since that the best way to keep free from colds was to sit in draughts as much as possible and I believe there is a good deal of sound sense back of that dictum, but Ethel will not let me try the virtue of the thing.
No doctor has told me that it is right to take long walks on an early morning empty stomach and so I have not done it, but I have an English friend who used to walk twenty miles or so to breakfast. The English are always walking twenty miles to somewhere, and look at them. A fine race!
The Americans are not much given to walking, but look at them—a fine race!
Everything is certainly for the best—always, everywhere.
We walked around to the kitchen and found Minerva on her knees before the fire watching insufficient kindling feebly burn while James sat on the kitchen table swinging one long leg and teaching her a rag-time melody.
He rose to his feet as we came in and gave us a hearty good morning and then burst into a good-natured laugh that showed all his beautiful white teeth.
“Made an early start, sir.”
“Yes, James. It isn’t absolutely necessary for rehearsals to begin quite so early,” said I. “It woke us up.”
“There, now, Minerva, what did I tell you? I was sure they’d hear it.”
“No question about your filling the church.”
“’Deed I’m awful sorry,” said Minerva, “Wakin’ you so early, an’ the fire not kindled.”
“Well, never mind. We’ll drink some milk and then we’ll go for a little walk, but I think that to-morrow perhaps the rehearsals needn’t begin until after breakfast. There’ll be a long morning before you and you can rehearse in the morning and take the nature study in the afternoon.”
“Yas’r,” said Minerva, a shade of reluctance in her tone which I attributed to the mention of nature study. Minerva evidently wanted life to be one grand sweet song.
All that morning snatches of melody floated over the landscape in the which landscape we were idly lolling under the trees reading, and I think that household duties were neglected, but that James was not averse to work was shown by the fact that he carried great armfuls of kindling wood into the kitchen.
When Ethel went out there just before lunch she found the west window banked up to the second sash with kindling wood.
Ethel likes to have the whole house in ship shape order, and this unsightly pile of wood in the kitchen went against the grain. There was enough there to last a week and meantime the kitchen was robbed of that much daylight.
James sat on the door-sill idly whittling a piece of kindling and Minerva, temporarily songless, was getting lunch ready.
“Oh, James,” said Ethel after a rapid survey of the situation, “I wish if you haven’t anything else to do that you would pile that kindling wood out in the woodshed.”
She told me he burst into his hearty laugh, and, rising with alacrity, he said:
“Certainly, Mrs. Vernon,” and for the next half hour he was busily employed in undoing what he had done in the half hour before.
“Oh, it will be easy to find employment for him along those lines,” said I when she told me. “We’ll just make him do things and undo them and that laugh of his will keep Minerva sweet natured and he’ll earn his wages over and over again.”
“Well, it seems sort of wicked to make a human being do unnecessary things just for the sake of making him undo them again,” said my mistress of economics.
“In cases like that the end justifies the means.”
After lunch that day Ethel interrogated Minerva as to her feelings.
“Oh, Mis. Vernon, James is like human folks to me. He’s in a way different from you an’ Mist. Vernon.”
“Do you mean you think he’s better?” said Ethel, more to draw Minerva out than for any other reason.
“No, but he’s more folksy. You an’ Mist. Vernon, after all’s said an’ done, is white. It ain’t dat he’s kinder dan you, but he’s more my kind. My, he’d be lovely in de city.”
Minerva sighed.
“Minerva, don’t think about the city, you wouldn’t have such a chance to sing together in the city as you have here. I couldn’t get up such a concert as this is going to be in the city, but up here you have just that much more freedom.”
“Minerva,” continued Ethel, “You needn’t scrub the kitchen floor this afternoon. I want you and James to join a little school that I am going to get up.”
“Never did like school,” said Minerva.
“Well,” said Ethel, feeling that she had approached the subject in the wrong way, “I don’t mean a school where you have to sit in a stuffy room and do sums on a board and learn to read and write. I mean that we are going out into the woods to learn something about the denizens of the woods and fields.”
“Yas’m,” said Minerva.
Minerva was an emotional being. There was never any doubt of that. I think it was the next day that Ethel and I were returning from a walk and we saw James leave the kitchen and go around to the front of the house as if he were looking for some one.
When he saw us he said:
“Have you seen Minerva?”
We told him we had not, but just then we all saw her coming out of the woodshed with a handful of kindlings, her cat, still somewhat sticky, perched on her shoulder.
She entered the kitchen and I was just about to ask James a question about the Hurlbert Home when the now familiar shrieking voice of Minerva came to us through the open kitchen window.
“Ow, ow, take it away. Ow, I’m bitten.”
Ethel, alarmed, started for the house. I, nonplussed, stood still. James burst out laughing.
A moment later Minerva came running out of the front door, her apron over her head.
“What is it, Minerva?” said Ethel, taking hold of her and uncovering her face.
“Ow, Mis. Vernon, dere’s der stranges’ animal in the kitchen. Tain’t a dog an’ it has a mouth like hinges, an’ I’m afraid it’ll eat Miss Pussy up.”
“What a child you are, Minerva,” said Ethel. “There’s no animal there. I’m sure of it.”
“Let’s see what it is,” said I, and turned to speak to James, but he had disappeared.
I could hear his hearty voice shattering the air with laughter, but I could not see him.
“Come, we’ll go in and see this beast,” said I. “Perhaps it’s a rat.”
“’Deed it ain’t a rat. I ain’t agoin’ in. It’s scutterin’ all over de place, an’ it’s stark naked.”
Scuttering all over the place and stark naked. A light burst on me.
Ethel and I went in hand in hand, because her hand sought mine. I can not say that I was afraid.
When we reached the sitting room we could hear the scuttering together with other noises that were not pleasant, and I realized that to metropolitan Minerva the animal must be very terrifying if, indeed, he proved to be what I thought he was.
Minerva had evidently slammed the kitchen door after her, for it was shut.
I opened it and the stark naked scutterer turned out to be a little pig not much bigger than Miss Pussy and as pink and nude as Venus rising from the sea.
The little chap was frantic and he rushed through the dining room into the sitting room and thence to the front porch.
Minerva had been standing there wringing her hands, with her back to the house. It therefore happened that she did not see the innocent little porker coming. His only idea was to get out of doors and away, but he blundered in doing so, for he ran plump into Minerva, who sat down on him as promptly and then in her agitation she rolled off the front steps to the front path, and the squealing piggy, freeing himself from her skirts, ran off down the road.
“Ow, he’s bit me. He’s bit me,” said Minerva, sitting up in the path and rubbing her knee.
I am not entirely at home in natural history, but I do not think it is the habit of little pigs to bite, and I told Minerva so, but she insisted that she was bitten, and nothing would calm her until Mrs. Ethel took her into the kitchen and satisfied her that she had not been bitten at all.
Minerva’s plight had its funny side, and James evidently thought so, for he now came into view and said,
“She’s the most fidgety girl I ever saw. I brought her a present of a little pig and left it in the kitchen for her, and the pig has never been away from its mother before, and it was most as much frightened as Minerva was.”
“What she needs is lessons in natural history, James. The other day she mistook a cow for a bear, and the only animals she seems to know are horses and dogs and cats.”
“I guess I’ll go get that pig,” said James. We could hear the little animal squealing. It was running madly around in the lower lot.
“I’ll help you, James.”
Afterwards I was sorry I had said I would help James. I had never chased a pig before, and I did not know they could cover ground so quickly or so unexpectedly. Twice I was bowled over in my efforts to grab the slippery beast, and by the time that he was caught I was winded and perspiring.
“I’ll take it into the kitchen and show it to Minerva and tell her how it happened,” said James.
“Yes, do,” said I. “The only way to get her broken to pigs is to show her that they do not intend any harm.”
We went into the kitchen and found her laughing hysterically, while Ethel was picking up pieces of crockery that decorated the floor. It seems that the lunch dishes were piled up preparatory to washing them and piggy had run against the leg of the table and dislodged them with destructive effect.
James entered the kitchen, holding the pig clasped to his ample chest.
“There, Minerva, you see the animal is perfectly harmless.”
“My, my, I never did see such a mouth,” said she.
Ethel does not like to touch strange animals, but she wished to show Minerva how perfectly innocuous this little piggy was, and so she stroked its pink little snout and the next instant the little fellow had her finger in its mouth and sucked it as if it were a stick of candy.
This at first frightened Minerva and it did not please my fastidious wife, but for the sake of the object lesson she said:
“Now, you see, Minerva, this pig is even more harmless than a cat, for a cat has claws and this pig has only—”
Alas, for Ethel. The pig showed what it could do by inserting its pearly teeth in her finger.
She snatched her hand away in a moment, but Minerva’s confidence in pigs had been so lessened that we told James that he would better take his gift elsewhere.
For my part I was not sorry to see the shiny little creature go. Pigs have never appealed to me as household pets. My ancestors came from England.