The Tobacco Tiller Part 9

"Did de moon change las' month? Do de ground git wet when hit rain?"

laughed the old negress.

"I got some terbaccer and a squirrel, and a sack o' sausage on the buggy seat fer you, Aunt July: s'pose we breng 'em in, and then I'll git you to tell me some thengs. Hit's gittin' late, and I'll have to git along soon."

"De weddin' trouble! Dat's. .h.i.t--dat's. .h.i.t!" nodded the old seeress, when after a voluble flow of thanks for the presents, she brought out a coffee-cup and peered solemnly at the grounds in its bottom. "I sees a dark-haared woman, a kind woman, wid two beaux. One of 'em a slim man, t'other un's a big man. De woman gwine marry one dem men, but not widout de resistance o' a black-haared woman. Dis black-haared woman bound to resist de makin' o' dis marriage. She jest _can't_ holp hit. A brown-haared woman too, gwine resist de makin' o' de marriage. I sees letters in de cup. Dar's gwine be found and handed over to de right person a letter dat'll hasten de marriage."

"Can you see which _one_ the men'll git the woman, Aunt July?" Mrs.

Doggett leaned forward eagerly.

"De most worthy man--he gwine win her--dat man dat's travelled much, dat's seed a heap o' de country, _he_'s de one!"

"What will the black-haired woman have to do, Aunt July?" besought Mrs.

Doggett.

"Why, she'll jes hab to keep her eyes open, and do what she kin. She'll hab to walk and talk, and bofe bemean and brag! But she must be cunnun'

like de sarpent, and act quick like de sarpent, or what she tryin' to breng about won't come to pa.s.s."

"But hit _will_ come to pa.s.s, ef the woman acts right?" persisted Mrs.

Doggett.

"Yes, I sees a marriage. I sees a man half distracted 'long 'bout de time de blue gra.s.s gits ripe, but he'll git her, he'll git her. I sees a couple standin' afore de preacher. He'll make her a good livin'."

"Like he's done his wife afore this one?" suggested Mrs. Doggett, hopefully.

"I don't see no marriage befoah dis un," said July, vaguely: "de grounds is too black to see back, but I see from de weddin'-day on, dey gwine live in happiness and contempt!"

Mrs. Doggett drove homeward in a state of ecstasy. In the prophetess'

vague words she saw the certain marriage of Miss Lucy James and Mr.

Galvin Brock. Of a surety Mr. Brock was the man who would "make a good living" for her, and was he not the most worthy? Perhaps Mr. Lindsay had travelled as much as Mr. Brock, but Mrs. Doggett cast this uneasy thought aside. Surely Mr. Brock was the fortunate man.

Mrs. Doggett reached her home in a drizzling rain: her bonnet was drooping, and her vehicle, and dress were heavily splashed with mud, when she drove slowly in the yard, the pigs trotting placidly behind.

"How's Bob Ed?" asked Mr. Doggett as he a.s.sisted her to alight.

"Now Eph," Mrs. Doggett's voice was full of remonstrance, "did you thenk I wuz a goin' yonside town with them pigs a trailin' me?"

"I hadn't missed them peegs: did they foller ye?" Mr. Doggett's grin irritated Mrs. Doggett.

"I reckon they _did_!" she complained, "and I jest had to creep! I wuz afeerd ef I went through town they'd be picked up on Wild Cat Row, maybe, so I jest went across the river to see old July Pullins, and tuck the pigs with me."

"Over that road? Well, I do know!"

"Yes, over that road!" Mrs. Doggett jerked out resentfully: "and I had a plumb skeer a comin' back. Don't you thenk, yonside the bridge, I met one them aut'mobile waggins--a red painted one--the reddest theng this side o' predition! Big Money, he 'lowed that horn the feller blowed when he seed us, wuz old Gab'el's trump, I reckon. He come a one o' killin'

me! He tuck to backin', and ef that man hadn't jumped out and ketcht holt the bridle, and helt him while t'other man driv' that red devil past us, he'd 'a' backed plumb over into the river!"

"Well, that wuz kind o' him!" remarked Mr. Doggett.

"He wuz a mighty polite, takin' kind o' man," continued Mrs. Doggett.

"They must 'a' been a couple them Northern milli'n'ers out on a ja'nt.

They wuzn't our kind o' people. I wished I'd 'a' asked that un that helt Big Money, who he wuz, but I wuz so pestered, hit never come in my mind onct!"

"I thought after you started, I'd ort to 'a' went with you," condoled Mr. Doggett, "although the terbaccer needed me mighty bad; but you got back all right fer all your trouble, ef I didn't go. A body has a heap to be thankful fer, now don't they?"

"Well hit hain't no matter now," Mrs. Doggett philosophized, taking off her forlorn bonnet, "though ef I'd 'a' knew hit wuz a gona rain I wouldn't 'a' went."

CHAPTER VI

A NEIGHBORLY CALL

"With the lips meanwhile she can honor it! Oil of flattery, the best antifriction known, subdues all irregularities whatsoever."

A slight stiffness of limb next morning held Mrs. Doggett an unwilling prisoner in bed, until a somewhat later hour than she arose on the day of her visit to the seeress, and by eight o'clock, when she had gotten her morning's work done, the snow, which had begun to fall at daybreak, was full six inches deep.

The exigencies of the case, however, according to the seeress, permitted no delay, and Mrs. Doggett's purpose was not to be thwarted by any sort of weather, or sundry twinges in her joints.

She slipped on an old pair of Mr. Doggett's brown woolen socks over her Sunday shoes, tied her head carefully in a little gray breakfast shawl, in lieu of the clover-st.i.tched sun-bonnet (drooping on its nail from the exposure of the day before), and wrapped herself in an old thick, black "dolman."

Lily Pearl seized the broom.

"Lemme sweep you a little road out to the gate, Mammy!"

"No honey, I don't want you to do that," her grandmother, who still struggled with the hooks of the dolman, answered her. "Sweepin'll spread your hands so's they won't look nice to play chunes on the orgin!"

The child ran to her grandmother and buried her face, quivering with ecstatic antic.i.p.ation, in her neck.

"Oh Mammy," she breathed, "_will_ I have a orgin to play on, sometime?"

Mrs. Doggett forgot her hurry, and sat down with the child clasped close in her arms.

"Lord, yes, darlin'," she a.s.sured her, "and maybe a pieanner, too'll be a settin' in t'other corner o' your parler. I don't never intend these little hands shall ever tech a cow's teat, ner do nary theng that'll rough 'em! I want 'em to be slim and delicate like them little bird claws o' Mrs. Castle's, when you air a grown lady! You won't never thenk hard o' Mammy when she wants you to wear your bonnet clost, and keep your shoes on in summer, will you, honey? She don't want your feet to never git big, and wants you to be raised white complected, agin the time you git to wearin' silk dresses with trails on 'em ever' day!"

Lily Pearl clasped the prospective "bird claws" in a thrill of delight.

"Will I have money to buy candy fer Dock and me, when I git big, Mammy?"

she queried hopefully.

Mrs. Doggett smiled, as remembering her errand, she put the little girl down. "Lord, yes, you'll be goin' 'round a tradin' in the stores, maybe carryin' a roll o' bills so big a cow couldn't swaller 'em!"

After cautioning the child to watch the fire until her return, with skirts held well aloft, Mrs. Doggett took the path that led over the hill a quarter of a mile to the James' house.

To her infinite satisfaction, while she divested herself of her wraps and her unconventional overshoes on Miss Nancy's kitchen hearth, where that lady sat, with a pressing-board on her lap, and a basket of sc.r.a.ps beside her, Mrs. Doggett learned that Miss Lucy had gone to town with the marketing, and that Mr. Lindsay had ridden to the store, two miles away, for the mail.

"You ain't been up lately, Mrs. Doggett," Miss Nancy remarked, reluctantly drawing her three flat-irons aside, so that her visitor might share a portion of the meagre fire with them: "ain't you been well?"

"Me? No, I hain't been well. I been a complainin' ever sence Christmas, from the top o' my head to the sole o' my foot. I thenk I must have bile on the liver, I complain so much with a ketch in the back."