Kitabı oku: «The Carter Girls», sayfa 6
CHAPTER X
OFF FOR THE MOUNTAINS
On the train at last and headed for the mountains!
That month of preparation had been about the busiest in the lives of the Carter girls. Douglas had graduated at school and taken her examinations for college, besides being the head and guiding star of the family. Her father’s burden seemed to have fallen on her young shoulders; everything was brought to her to decide. Helen was fully capable of taking the initiative but her extravagant tendencies were constantly cropping up, and Douglas was afraid to give her free rein for fear she would overturn them in a ditch of debt.
The letter from their mother had been unfortunate in a measure since it had but strengthened Helen’s ideas on what was suitable in the way of clothes. She wanted to plunge into the extravagance of outing suits and pig-skin shoes and all kinds of extremely attractive camping get-ups advertised in New York papers. Douglas was firm, however, and Helen was forced to content herself with a love of a corduroy skirt, cold gravy in color, with sport pockets and smoked pearl buttons. Lucy had pouted a whole day because she could not have one, too, just like it.
Nan was a great comfort to Douglas as she was fully sensible of the importance of their not charging anything, no matter how small, so that when their father did recover he would not have debts awaiting him. The only trouble about Nan was she was so often in a dream, and her memory was not to be depended upon. With all the good intentions in the world she would forget to deliver a most important message, or would promise and mean to attend to something and then lose herself in a book of poetry and forget it absolutely.
Lucy was gay and bright and very useful when it came to running errands. Her only trouble was the constant sparring with Helen, whom she secretly admired more than any one in the world.
Master Bobby had spent a blissful month of “shoving” for Dr. Wright. Dr. Wright had a theory that all children were naturally good and that when they were seemingly naughty it was only because they were not sufficiently occupied.
“Give the smallest child some real responsibility and he is sure to be worthy of it. If their brains and hands and feet are busy with something that they feel is worth while, children are sure to be happy.” Bobby had sat in his car a half hour at a time, while the doctor was busy with patients, perfectly happy and good, contenting himself with playing chauffeur. He would occasionally toot the horn just to let the passer-by understand that he was on the job.
The beloved home had been put in apple pie order and handed over to the poor, rich fugitives from the war zone. The kind old cook had bidden them a tearful farewell and betaken herself to her new place after careful admonishings of her pupil, Helen, not to let nobody ’suade her that any new fangled yeast is so good as tater yeast.
The real fun in the venture was buying the provisions and necessary camping outfits. That was money that must be spent and they could do it with a clear conscience. The lists were written and rewritten and revised a score of times until they could not think of a single thing that had been left out. The freight was sent off several days ahead of them to give poor Cousin Lizzie’s bed time to get there before them.
Poor Cousin Lizzie, indeed! She was brave about the undertaking up to the time of starting, but when she was handed into the common coach, there being no parlor car on that morning train, she almost gave up. Nothing but the memory of old Cousin Robert Carter’s kindness to her mother sustained her.
“A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children,” she muttered as she sank on the dusty, dingy cushions of the very common, common day coach. “That is surely what old Cousin Robert Carter did. I have not ridden in such a coach for more than thirty years, I am sure. Why was this train chosen? There must be good trains running to the mountains that have chair cars.”
“Yes, Cousin Lizzie,” said Douglas, “but you see Greendale is a very small station and only the very accommodating accommodations stop there. The trains with chair cars stop only at the big places.”
Douglas was very tired and looked it. She was very pale and her firm mouth would tremble a little in spite of her self-control. No one seemed to notice it, as every one was tired and every one had been busy. She felt when they were once off that she could rest, if only Cousin Lizzie would not complain too much and if Helen and Lucy would not squabble and if dear little Bobby would not poke his head too far out of the window.
Dr. Wright came down to see them off and as he shook hands with Douglas, he looked very searchingly at her tired face.
“You must be selfish when you get to the mountains and rest for a week,” he said. “You are about all in.”
“Oh, I’ll be all right in a few minutes. It is just getting started that has tired me. Bobby, please don’t poke your head out, – your arm, either. Don’t you know something might come along and chop you right in two?”
“I’m a shover for this here train. If I don’t stick my arm way out the train a-runnin’ up behind us will c’lision with us.”
“See here, young man, you are still in my employ and I don’t intend to have you working for the C. & O. while you are working for me. When my chauffeur travels to the mountains, he has to keep his hands inside the windows and his head, too. He must be kind to his sisters, especially his Sister Douglas, who is very tired. I am really letting you off duty so you can take care of Douglas. You see, when a lot of women start on a trip they have to have some man with them to look after them.”
“That’s so, boss, an’ I’m goin’ to be that man. Women folks is meant to look after eatin’s an’ to sew up holes an’ things. I’m hungry right now!” exclaimed Bobby, man-like, finding some work immediately for the down-trodden sex.
“All aboard!” called the brakeman.
Dr. Wright was bidding hasty adieux when it was discovered that Nan had left the carefully prepared lunch basket in the waiting-room. Poor Nan! She had been occupied trying to remember some lines of Alfred Noyes about a railroad station and had carelessly placed the basket on the seat beside her, and then, in the excitement of getting Oscar and Susan into the colored coach and picking up all the many little parcels and shawls and small pillows that Cousin Lizzie always traveled with, she had forgotten it.
“Oh, let me get off and get it,” she implored, but Dr. Wright gently pushed her back into her seat and hastily whispered something to her that made her smile instead of cry, which she was on the verge of doing. She sat quite quietly while the engine puffed its way out of the shed and Dr. Wright jumped off the moving train.
She waved to him and he gave her a reassuring smile.
“He is like the hills,” she thought. “‘I will look unto the hills from whence cometh my help.’”
“Nan, how could you?” started Helen, and Lucy chimed in with:
“Yes, how could you?”
“I am so sorry, but maybe it will come all right, anyhow.”
“Come all right, anyhow!” sniffed Cousin Lizzie. “It is all right now as far as I am concerned. I certainly could not taste a mouthful in such surroundings as these.”
Douglas put her tired head on the dingy, dusty red plush upholstery and closed her eyes. Food made no difference to her. All she wanted was rest. Bobby opened the package of chewing gum that his employer had slipped him as advance wages, and forgot all about the hunger that he had declared a moment before.
“I ain’t a keering, Nan, ’bout no lunch. I am goin’ to buy all the choclid an’ peanuts what the man brings in the train an’ old lunch ain’t no good nohow.”
Nan kept on smiling an enigmatic smile that mystified Helen and Lucy. They were accustomed to Nan’s forgetting things but she was usually so contrite and miserable. Now she just smiled and peeped out the window.
“I don’t believe she gives a hang,” whispered Lucy to Helen.
“Looks that way. If she had spent hours making the sandwiches, as I did, maybe she would not be so calm about it.”
“I made some of them, too.”
“Oh, yes, so you did, – about three, I should say.”
“Lots more. You’re all the time thinking you make all the sandwiches.”
Douglas opened her tired eyes at the sharp tone of voice that Lucy had fallen into.
“Girls, please don’t squabble.”
“All right, we won’t! You go to sleep, honey, and I’ll keep Bobby from falling out the window and agree with Lucy about everything even if she insists that Dr. Wright is an Adonis. Come here, Bobby. Helen is going to make up a really true story to tell you,” and Helen lifted her little brother from the seat by Douglas. In a few moments he was so absorbed in the wonderful true story about bears and whales that a little boy named Bobby had shot and caught, he did not notice that the train had stopped at the first station after leaving Richmond.
Some excitement on the platform made them all look out the window. The conductor had waved to the engineer his signal for starting when a car came dashing madly up to the station. Frantic pulling of ropes by the accommodating conductor on the accommodating accommodation! A belated traveler, no doubt!
“It’s my ’ployer!” screamed Bobby. “Look at him park his car! Ain’t he some driver, though?”
It was Dr. Wright, breaking laws as to speed, presuming on the Red Cross tag that the doctors attach to their cars. Several policemen had noted him as he sped through the suburbs, but felt surely it was a matter of life and death when they saw the Red Cross tag, and let him go unmolested and unfined.
“Here it is, Miss Nan!” he called as he waved the heavy basket, endangering the precious sandwiches. Eager hands drew the basket through an open window while a grinning brakeman and a rather irate conductor got the train started once more.
“Here’s some aromatic ammonia! Make Miss Douglas take a teaspoonful in a glass of water,” he said to Helen as he handed a small vial to her over Bobby’s head. “It almost made me miss the train, but she must have it.”
“Oh, Dr. Wright, I am so much obliged to you. You are very kind to us.”
“Helen’s been making up a wonderfulest true story for me,” called Bobby, leaning out dangerously far to see the last of his ’ployer. “So I’m being good an’ not worrying Douglas.”
There was unalloyed approval now in the blue, blue eyes, and Helen thought, as the young doctor gave one of his rare smiles, that he was really almost handsome.
CHAPTER XI
THE CAMP
The lunch did not go begging. Even Cousin Lizzie forgot her disgusting surroundings and deigned to partake of Helen’s very good lettuce sandwiches. She even pronounced the coffee from the thermos bottle about the best she had tasted for many a day.
“My cook doesn’t make very good coffee. I don’t know what she does to it. When we go back to Richmond I think I shall get you to show her how you make it, Helen.”
Helen smiled and had not the heart to tell her cousin that her own cook had made the coffee, after all. Of all the young Carters, Miss Somerville was fondest of Helen. She had infinite patience with her foibles and thought her regard for dress and style just as it should be.
“A woman’s appearance is a very important factor and too much thought cannot be given it,” she would say. Miss Somerville had boasted much beauty in her youth and still was a very handsome old lady, with a quantity of silver white hair and the complexion of a débutante. “Gentlemen are more attracted by becoming clothes than anything else,” she declared, “and of course it is nothing but hypocrisy that makes women say they do not wish to attract the opposite sex.” Miss Somerville, having had many opportunities to marry, and having chosen single blessedness of her own free will, always spoke with great authority of the male sex. She always called them gentlemen, however, and the way she said “gentlemen” made you think of dignified persons in long-tailed coats and high stocks who paid their addresses on bended knees.
“Only one more station before we get to Greendale!” exclaimed Douglas. “I feel real rested.”
“That’s cause I’se been so good,” said the angel Bobby. “I ain’t a single time had my head an’ arm chopped off. I tell you, I don’t do shover’s work for the C. & O. for nothin’. My boss don’t ’low me to work for nobody but jest him.”
“You have been as good as gold,” said Douglas, “and now I am going to buy you some candy,” she added, as the train boy came through crying his wares.
“Choclid?”
“Suppose you have marshmallows instead. They are so much less evident on your countenance,” suggested Helen.
“All right! I’d jest as soon ’cause that nice dirty boy in the mountings kin milk me some choclid out’n the cow whenever I gits hungry.”
“What a filthy trip it has been!” said Cousin Lizzie as she shook the cinders from her black taffeta suit.
“Yes, it is grimy,” declared Helen, “and I came off without my Dorine. I had just got a new one. I do hate to arrive anywhere with a shiny nose. Lend me your vanity box, Douglas, please.”
“Vanity box! I never thought about bringing it. It is packed with the other extra, useless things in Cousin Lizzie’s trunk room. It never entered my head that we would want a vanity box at a mountain camp.”
“Well, I don’t intend to have a shiny nose in a mountain camp any more than any other place. I hate to look greasy.”
“Have a marshmallow,” drawled Nan. “They are great beautifiers.”
So Helen powdered her nose with some of Bobby’s candy, much to the amusement of that infant.
Lewis and Bill were waiting for the travelers at the station at Greendale with the ramshackle little car, which they had christened the Mountain Goat because of its hill climbing proclivities. Josh was also there, with the faithful Josephus hitched to an old cart to carry the luggage up to the camp.
The porter from the summer hotel of Greendale was on the platform as the train stopped and he immediately came forward, thinking these stylish passengers were for his hostelry; but the little mountain boy stepped in front of him and said:
“We uns is you allses baggage man,” and he seized their grips and parcels and won their hearts as well with his merry blue eyes and soft voice.
“Oh, you must be the dirty boy what’s got a choclid cow!” exclaimed Bobby. “I’m a dirty boy, too, now I’m come to live in the mountings an’ I’m goin’ to be a baggage man, too, if Dr. Wright will let me off from being a shover up here where th’ ain’t no traffic cops to ’rest you if’n you don’t stick out yo’ arm goin’ round the cornders. I’d most ruther be a baggage man than a shover if’n I can sit in front with you and drive the mule.” All this poured forth in one breath while the young men were greeting the ladies.
“All aboard!” shouted the brakeman and the signal was given for the engineer to start.
“Oh, where are Oscar and Susan?” from a distracted Douglas. “Stop, please stop!”
Oscar was discovered peacefully sleeping and Susan so deep in her beloved dream book that she was oblivious to the passing of time and miles. They were dragged from the colored coach by the amused brakeman and dumped on the platform as the train made its second rumbling start upgrade.
The bringing of these two servants had been a problem to our girls. They were both of them kind and faithful but were strictly urban in their raising, and how the real rough country would affect them remained to be seen. They sniffed scornfully at the small station with its stuffy waiting-rooms, one for coloreds and one, whites, and looked at the great mountains that closed them in with distrust and scorn.
“Uncle Oscar, this place jes’ ain’t no place at all,” grumbled Susan. “Look at that shack over yonder what passes fer a sto’, and this here little po’ white boy settin’ up yonder on the seat with our Bobby! He needn’t think he is goin’ ter ’sociate with the quality. You, Bobby, git down from thar an’ come hol’ my han’!”
“Hol’ your grandmother’s han’! I ain’t no baby. I’m a ’spressman an’ am a gointer hol’ the mule. That was pretty near a joke,” he said, looking confidingly into the eyes of his new friend. “One reason I was so good a-comin’ up here was because we let Susan go in the Jim Crow coach to keep Uncle Oscar comp’ny, ’cause when she is ridin’ anywhere near me she’s all time wantin’ me to hol’ her han.’”
“We thought we’d make two loads of you,” said Lewis, when the greetings were over. “Bill can go ahead with Aunt Lizzie and some of you while the rest of us walk, and when he puts you out at the camp he can come back and meet us half way.”
“Douglas must ride,” declared Helen. “She is so tired.”
“I’m a lot rested now.”
“Yes, sure, you must ride,” said Lewis, a shade of disappointment in his tone as he had been rather counting on having a nice little walk and talk with his favorite cousin.
“Say, Lewis, you run the jitney first. Legs stiff and tired sitting still,” said Bill magnanimously.
So while Lewis was cheated out of a walk with Douglas, he had the satisfaction of having her sit beside him as he drove the rickety car up the winding mountain road. Miss Somerville was packed in the back with Nan and Lucy, but when Lucy found that Helen was to walk, she decided to walk, too. Susan was put in her place, and so her feelings were somewhat mollified.
“Josephus ain’t above totin’ one of the niggers ’long with the trunks,” said Josh, determined to get even for the remarks he had heard Oscar and Susan make in regard to “po’ white trash.” The antagonism that exists between the mountaineer and darkey is hard to overcome.
So Oscar, the proud butler of “nothin’ but fust famblies,” was forced either to walk up the mountain, something he dreaded, or climb up on the seat of the cart by the despised “po’ white trash.” He determined on the latter course and took his seat in dignified silence with the expression of one who says: “My head is bloody but unbowed.”
“The freight came and we have hauled it up and unpacked the best we could. I am afraid it is going to be mighty rough for you girls and for poor Aunt Lizzie, who is certainly a brick for coming, but we have done our best,” said Lewis to Douglas.
“Rough, indeed! Who would expect divans and Turkish rugs at a camp? We are sure to like it and we are so grateful to you and Mr. Tinsley. But look at the view! Oh, Cousin Lizzie, just look at the view!”
“Now see here, Douglas, I said I would come and chaperone Cousin Robert Carter’s granddaughters if no one would make me look at views. Views do not appeal to me.” She couldn’t help looking at the view, though, as there was nothing else to look at.
“I’s jes’ lak you, Miss Lizzie. I don’ think a thing er views. I ain’t never seed one befo’ but I heard tell of ’em. Looks lak a view ain’t nothin’ but jes’ seem’ fur, an’ if’n th’ain’t nothin’ ter see, what’s the use in it?”
Wordsworth’s lines came to Nan and she whispered them to herself as she looked off across the wonderful valley:
“‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’”
She intended to whisper it to herself but as the march of the lines took possession of her, she spoke them out loud without knowing it. On the ninth line she came out strong with, “‘Great God! I’d rather be – ’” Miss Somerville and Susan looked at her in amazement. Her dark eyes were fixed on the despised view with a look of a somnambulist.
“Lawd a mussy! Miss Nan done got a tech er heat!”
“Blow your horn, Lewis. Didn’t you hear Nan?” from Miss Somerville. “She must see something coming.”
Nan went off into such a peal of laughter that Bill Tinsley himself could not have vied with her. She blushingly admitted it was just some poetry she was repeating to herself, which made Miss Somerville agree with Susan that Miss Nan had a “tech er heat.”
“You had better have a dose of that aromatic ammonia and lie down for a while when we get to the top,” suggested Miss Lizzie dryly.
The road stopped at the cabin some distance from the pavilion, so they alighted and Lewis turned the car on a seemingly impossible place and careened down the mountain to pick up the others before they were exhausted with the climb.
The cabin was in perfect order and so clean that even Miss Lizzie was destined to find it difficult to discover germs. Gwen had rubbed and scrubbed and then beautified to the best of her ability. She had purchased a few yards of coarse scrim at the store and fresh curtains were at the windows. The white iron bed was made up in spotless counterpane and pillows, and on the freshly scrubbed pine floor was a new rag rug of her own weave. The open fireplace was filled with fragrant spruce boughs, and on the high mantel and little deal table she had put cans of honeysuckle and Cherokee roses. She had longed for some vases but had not liked to ask the young men to buy them. She felt that the curtains were all the expense she should plunge them into.
When Gwen had seen the car approaching she had shyly gone behind the cabin. She dreaded in a measure meeting these girls and their cousin. She had become accustomed to the presence of the young gentlemen, but what would the girls think of her? Wouldn’t they think she was odd and funny looking? She was quite aware of the fact that she was very different in appearance from the girls in cities. She had pored over too many illustrated papers not to know how other girls her age dressed and looked. Her scant blue dress was made after a pattern sent to the Mission School by some interested ladies. It was supposed to be the best pattern for children to use where the cloth must be economically cut. So it was and singularly picturesque in its straight lines, but Gwen was but human and now that fashion sheets plainly said wider skirts and flaring, here she was in her narrow little dress! She hated it. Bare legs and feet, too!
Her instinct was to turn and flee around the mountain to the arms of Aunt Mandy, who thought she was the most wonderful little girl in all the world. But there was the kind of fighting blood in her that could not run. The spirit of a grandfather who had been one of the heroes of Balaclava made her hold up her proud little head and go boldly around to the front of the cabin to face the dreadful ladies.
“Oh, you must be Gwen!” exclaimed Douglas, coming forward with both hands to greet the girl. “Mr. Somerville has told us how splendidly you have taken care of them and I know you must have arranged this room for Cousin Lizzie. It is lovely.”
Gwen no longer felt like one of the Light Brigade. This was not the jaws of Death and the mouth of Hell. This sweet young lady didn’t even notice her bare feet, and the scanty skirt made no difference at all. She introduced her to Miss Somerville and to her sister, Nan, who was also graciousness itself. Miss Somerville was a little stiff, reminding Gwen of the old ladies on the hotel piazza who bought the lace and tatting that she and Aunt Mandy made on the long winter evenings when the sun went down behind the mountains so early.
“Yes, the room will do very well.”
It was rather faint praise and took very little time to say when one considered that Gwen had spent days on her task. But Nan and Douglas made up to her for their cousin’s seeming coldness by going into raptures over the cabin.
“Lewis did not tell us he was going to whitewash the room for Cousin Lizzie,” said Nan.
“I whitewashed it myself. The young gentlemen were so occupied with constructing the pavilion that I could not bear to interrupt them.” Nan and Douglas could not help smiling at the little English girl’s stilted language but they hid their amusement. “I prepared the attic room for the negro maid. Would you like to go up and see that?”
“Yes, indeed! Come on, Susan, and see your room. It is to be right up over Cousin Lizzie’s.”
“Well, praise be to my Maker that I ain’t goin’ to have to sleep in the air. My lungs is weak at best an’ no doubt the air would be the death of me.”
Susan’s figure belied her words, as she was an exceedingly buxom girl with a chest expansion that Sandow might have envied her.
The attic was entered by a trap door from the room below and in lieu of stairs there was nothing but a ladder made chicken-steps style: small cross pieces nailed on a board.
The attic room was scrubbed as clean as Miss Lizzie’s. The low ceiling and very small windows certainly suited Susan’s idea of sanitation, as very little air could find its way into the chamber. A rough wooden bed was built against the wall, as is often the way in mountain cabins, more like a low, deep shelf than a bed. Gwen had stuffed a new tick with nice clean straw and Susan bid fair to have pleasant dreams on her fresh bed. A night spent without dreams of some kind was one wasted in the eyes of the colored girl who consulted her dream book constantly.
Josh had railed at Gwen for putting a bunch of black-eyed Susans in the attic room.
“Waitin’ on a nigger! Humph! You uns ain’t called on to lower yo’sef that a way. Niggers is niggers an’ we uns would ruther to bust than fetch an’ carry fer ’em.”
“This seems a very small thing to do,” Gwen had answered. She did not share the mountaineer’s prejudice against the black race. “I have no doubt this girl will like flowers just as much as Miss Somerville.”
So she did and a great deal more, as she expressed her appreciation of the tomato can of posies, and Miss Somerville had not even noticed the bouquets in her room. As Susan followed the girls up the funny steps and her head emerged through the trap door, her eyes immediately fell on the flowers.
“Well, Gawd be praised! My dream is out! I done fell asleep in the cyars an’ dream I see little chillun picking flowers in a fiel’. My book say that is one er two interpretations: you is either goin’ ter have fresh flowers laid on yer grabe er some one is goin’ ter make you a prisint er flowers. I thank yer, little miss, fer the bowkay.”
“Indeed, you are welcome,” and Gwen gave her a grave smile.
Susan had been quite doubtful at first what her attitude should be with this white girl who went barefooted and whitewashed cabins herself. She knew very well how to treat po’ white trash: like the dust under her feet. There was no other way for a self-respecting colored girl to treat them. But this white girl was different, somehow.
“She got a high steppin’ way that is mo’ like quality,” she declared to Oscar later. “She calls that slab-sided, shanty-boat ’ooman Aunt Mandy, but I ’low they ain’t no kin. Now that there Josh is low flung. I think Miss Douglas is crazy to let Bobby run around with him as much as she do. I bet his maw would stop it fast enough.”
The Carter girls’ enthusiasm and praise for the camp fully repaid the young men for their untiring labor. The pavilion was really a thing of beauty, built right up in the trees, as it were, like a great nest. It had no walls, but the roof projected far enough to keep out anything short of horizontal rain. An artistic rustic seat encircled the great poplar trunk in the centre and rough benches were built around three sides of the hall. Stairs went down on the fourth side to the kitchen in the basement, and outside, steps gave entrance to the pavilion. The whole building was screened. This was to be dining-room, living-room, dance hall and everything and anything they chose to make of it. The girls had reserved their victrola in renting the house and it now had the place of honor near the circular seat.
“We just unpacked it this morning,” said Lewis. “There was no use in music with no girls to dance with.”
“Aren’t men strange creatures?” laughed Helen. “Now girls love to dance so, they dance with each other, but two men would just as soon do fancy work as dance with one another.”
“Sooner,” muttered Bill. “Let’s have a spin!”
So a spirited “one-step” was put on and then the youths felt themselves to be overpaid for their work as they danced over the floor that had been the cause of many an aching joint and mashed thumb. Joints were not aching now and mashed thumbs were miraculously cured by clasping the hands of these pretty girls.
That first supper in the mountains was a very merry one. Miss Elizabeth was much refreshed by a nap and came to the pavilion quite resigned to life. She had nothing but praise for the handiwork of her beloved nephew, and even included the laconic Bill in her compliments. She wished, however, he would not be so sudden in his laughter as she was afraid it betrayed the vacant mind.
Gwen had made a delicious fricassee of chicken in the fireless cooker, the mysteries of which she had been taught at the mission school. Hot biscuit and honey from Aunt Mandy’s hive completed the feast.
“What delicious biscuit!” exclaimed Douglas. “Isn’t Gwen a wonder?”
“’Scuse me, Miss Douglas, but I made them biscuit,” said Susan, who was waiting on the table.
“But, Susan, I thought you said you couldn’t cook a thing!”
“That was in Richmond. I ain’t boun’ by no regulations of no club whin I leaves the city. You see in my club, which is called the Loyal Housemaids, we swars never to ’tend to two ’fessions at onct. When we is housemaids, we is housemaids, but out here where th’ain’t ter say no house, I kin do as I’s a mind, and I sho’ did want ter make some biscuit ter go with that there fricassy. Uncle Oscar an’ I is goin’ ter share the cookin’. An’ Miss Gwen is goin’ ter do the haid wuck. We ain’t conversant with the fi’less cooker an’ we don’t know nothin’ ’tall ’bout lightin’ kerosene stoves.”
Our girls were much gratified by Susan’s willingness to turn in and be of some real assistance. The work when only the family were there would be light, but if the many week-enders who had announced their intention of coming to their camp materialized, they well knew that it would take the combined efforts of them all to feed the hungry hordes and to wash the many dishes and make up the many cots. The laundering of the bed linen and towels would amount to more than they could cope with, so they had decided to patronize a laundry in Charlottesville, for all the flat work.
