The Comings of Cousin Ann Part 3

"I? Ann Peyton go to an old ladies' home? Cousin Betty you must be in a jocular vein," and Uncle Billy saw through the open door that his mistress drew herself up like a queen and her eyes flashed.

"Well, plenty of persons quite as good as you go to such homes every day," insisted the hostess. "I should think you would prefer having a regular home and not driving from pillar to post, never knowing where you will land next and never sure whether your relations will have room for you or not. As it is, just now I am really afraid it will not be convenient for you to stay much longer with us. What with Lucy's wedding and the measles and everything! Of course you need not go immediately--"

"That is enough, Cousin Betty. Never shall it be said that we have worn out our welcome. We go immediately." Miss Ann's voice was loud and clear. She stood up and pushed back her chair sharply. "We beg to be excused," she said and turned to walk from the room.

"Oh, nonsense, Cousin Ann!" exclaimed Mrs. Throckmorton impatiently.

"n.o.body said you must go immediately. It was just with the wedding imminent and--anyhow I meant it for the best when I mentioned a home for aged women. You would be quite comfortable in one and I am sure I could find exactly the right sort. You would have to make a deposit of several thousands--I don't know exactly how much but you must have a little something left since you pay old Billy's wages and have your horses shod and so on. Of course in the home you would have no such expenses. You could sell your horses and your old coach is little more than junk, and old Billy could go to a home too."

Miss Ann had paused a moment but when Mrs. Throckmorton spoke of her carriage as junk and suggested a home for Billy, too, her indignation knew no bounds and with a commanding gesture of dismissal she stalked from the dining-room. Billy was summoned and since it was out of the question to start so late in the evening it was determined that daylight should find them on their way to Buck Hill--Buck Hill where a certain flavor of old times was still to be found, with Cousin Bob Bucknor, so like his father, who had been one of the swains who followed in the train of the beautiful Ann Peyton. Buck Hill would always make her welcome!

And now--Buck Hill--and a hall bedroom!

CHAPTER IV

The Energy of Judith

"Mother, Cousin Ann Peyton is at Buck Hill. I saw her old carriage on the road when I went in for my express parcels."

"Why will you insist upon saying Cousin Ann, Judith?" drawled Mrs.

Buck. "I'd take my time about calling anybody cousin who scorned to do the same by me."

As Judith's mother took her time about everything, the girl smiled indulgently, and proceeded in the unpacking of the express packages.

"I'm so glad I am selling for this company that sends all goods directly to me instead of having me take orders the way the other one did. I'm just a born peddler and I know I make more when I can deliver the goods the minute they are bought and paid for. I'm going to take Buck Hill in on my rounds this year and see if all of my dear cousins won't lay in a stock of sweet soap and cold cream."

"There you are, calling those Buck Hill folks cousin again. Here child, don't waste that string. I can't see what makes you so wasteful. You should untie each package, carefully pick out the knots, and then roll it up in a ball. I wonder how many times I've told you that."

"So do I, Mother, and how many times I have told you that my time is too precious to be picking out hard knots. I bet this minute you've got a ball of string as big as your head, and please tell me how many packages you send out in a year."

The girl's manner was gay and bantering. She stopped untying parcels long enough to kiss her mother, who was laboriously picking the knots from the cut twine.

Mrs. Buck continued, "Wasting all of that good paper too! Here, let me fold it up. My mother and father taught me to be very particular about such things and goodness knows I've tried to teach you. I don't know where we'd be if I didn't save and if my folks before me hadn't done so."

It was a well-known fact that Judith's maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Knight, had been forced to abandon their ancestral farm in Connecticut and had started to California on a hazard of new fortunes but had fallen by the wayside, landing in Kentucky where their habits of saving string and paper certainly had not enriched them. Such being the case a whimsical smile from the granddaughter was pardonable.

"There is no telling," she laughed, "but you go on saving, Mother dear, and I'll try to do some making and between us we'll be as rich as our cousins at Buck Hill."

"There you are again! I'd feel ashamed to go claiming relations with folks that didn't even know I existed. I can't see what makes you do it."

"Oh, just for fun! You see we really and truly are kin. We are just as close kin as some of the people Cousin Ann Peyton visits, because you see she takes in anybody and everybody from the third and fourth generation of them that hate to see her coming. Yesterday in Louisville I looked up the family in some old books on the early history of Kentucky at the Carnegie Library and I found out a lot of things. In the first place the Bucks weren't named for Buck Hill."

The land owned by Mrs. Buck had at one time been as rich as any in Kentucky, but it had been overworked until it was almost as poor as the deserted farm in Connecticut. As Judge Middleton had said, the price of the right-of-way through the place sought by the trolley company had enabled her to lift the long-standing mortgage. She had inherited the farm, mortgage and all, from her father, who had bought it from old d.i.c.k Buck. The house was a pleasant cottage of New England architecture, built closer to the road than is usual on Kentucky farms. Old Mr. Knight had also followed the traditions of his native state by building his barn with doors opening on the road. The barn was larger than the house, but at the present time Judith's little blue car and an old red cow were its sole inhabitants. The hay loft, which was designed to hold many tons of hay, was empty. Sometimes an errant hen would find her way up there and start a nest in vain hopes of being allowed to lay her quota and begin the business of hatching her own offspring in her own way, but Judith would rout her out and force her to comply to community housekeeping in the poultry-house.

The Knights' motto might have been: "Lazy Faire" and the Buck's "'Nuff Said," as a wag at Ryeville had declared, but such mottoes did not fit Miss Judith. Nothing must be left as it was unless it was already exactly right and enough was not said until she had spoken her mind freely and fearlessly. Everything about this girl was free and fearless--her walk, the way she held her head, her unflinching hazel eyes and ready, ringing laugh. Even her red gold hair demanded freedom and refused to stay confined in coil, braid or net.

"I'm sure I don't know where you came from," Mrs. Buck drawled.

"You're so energetic and wasteful like. Of course my folks were never ones to sit still and be taken care of like the Bucks," and then her mild eyes would snap a bit, "but the Knights believed in saving."

"Even energy?" asked Judith saucily.

"Well, there isn't any use in wasting even energy. My father used to say that saving was the keynote of life as well as religion. I reckon you must be a throw back to my mother's grandfather, who was a Norse sailor, and reckless and wasteful and red-headed."

"Maybe so! At any rate I'm going to plough some guano into these acres, even though I can't plough the seas like my worthy grandpap, Sven Thorwald Woden, or whatever his name was. Just look at our wheat, Mother! It isn't fit to feed chickens with because our land is so poor. I'm tired of this eternal saving and no making. There is no reason why our yield shouldn't be as great per acre as Buck Hill, but we don't get half as much as they do. I've got to make a lot of money this summer so as to buy bags and bags of fertilizer. I've got a new scheme."

"I'll be bound you have," sighed Mrs. Buck.

"But you'll have to help me by making cakes and pies and things and peeling potatoes."

"All right, just so you don't hurry me! I can't be hurried."

"What a nice mother you are to say all right without even asking what it is."

"There wasn't any use in wasting my breath asking, because I knew you'd tell me without asking."

"Well, this is it: I'm going to feed the motormen and conductors. I got the idea yesterday when I was coming up from Louisville by trolley, when I saw the poor fellows eating such miserable lunches out of tin buckets with everything hot that ought to be cold and cold that ought to be hot. I heard them talking about it and complaining and the notion struck me. I went up and sat by the men and asked them how they would like to have a supper handed them every evening, because it seems it is the night meal they miss most, and they nearly threw a fit with joy. I'm to begin this very day."

Mrs. Buck threw up her hands in despair. "Judy, you just shan't do any such thing."

"Now, Mother, honey, you said you'd help and the men are not bringing any supper from home and you surely wouldn't have them go hungry."

"But you said I would not have to hurry."

"And neither will you. You can take your own time and I'll do the hurrying. I only have two suppers to hand out this evening, but I bet you in a week I'll be feeding a dozen men and they'll like it and pay me well and before you know it we'll be rich and we can have lots better food ourselves and even keep a servant."

"A servant! Heavens, Judith, not a wasteful servant!"

"No indeed, Mother, a saving one--one who will save us many steps and give me time to make more money than you can save. I'll give them fried chicken this evening and hashed brown potatoes and hot rolls and plum jam and b.u.t.termilk. The radishes are up and big enough to eat and so are the young onions. All conductors eat onions. They do it to keep people from standing on the back platform. I am certainly glad the line came through our place and we have a stop so near us. I'll have to order a dozen baskets with nice, neat covers and big enough to hold plates and cups and saucers. Thank goodness we have enough china to go around what with the Buck leavings and the Knight savings. I'm going to get some five and ten cent store silver and a great gross of paper napkins. I tell you, Mother, I'm going to do this up in style."

Mrs. Buck groaned out something about waste and sadly began paring potatoes, although it was then quite early in the forenoon and the trolleymen's supper was not to be served until six-thirty.

"That child'll wear herself out," she said, not to herself but to an old blue hen who was scratching around the hollyhocks, clucking loudly. The hen had a motherly air, having launched so many families, and Mrs. Buck felt instinctively she might sympathize with her.

"Thank goodness I ain't got but one to worry about," she continued as the repeated clucks brought Old Blue's brood around her. "Now just look at that poor old hen! I wonder if she'd rather be a hen and have so many large families to raise or if she wishes she'd been a rooster and maybe been fried in her youth."

Deep thinking was too much for Mrs. Buck. She stopped peeling potatoes and fell into a brown study. The side porch was a pleasant place to sit and dream. Judith had sorted out her wares and stored them in the back of her blue car. She had caught two chickens and dressed them and set a sponge for the hot rolls. She had promised herself the pleasure of serving the motorman and conductor a trial supper whose excellence she was sure would bring in dozens of orders.

A whirr from the barn and in a moment Judith was off and away, leaving a cloud of dust behind her.

"No hurry about the potatoes!" she called as she pa.s.sed the house, and then her voice trailed off with, "I'll be back by and by."

"Just like the old woman on a broomstick in Mother Goose," Mrs. Buck informed the hen and then since there was no hurry about the potatoes she fell to dreaming again. It was very peaceful on the shady porch with that whirlwind of a Judy gone for several hours on one of her crazy peddling jaunts. What a girl she was for plunging! Again the mother wondered where she came from and for the ten thousandth time agreed with herself that it must be the blood of the Norse sailor cropping out in her energetic daughter.

"It might have been the Bucks way back yonder somewhere. Certainly she didn't get any up-and-doing from old d.i.c.k Buck or my poor husband."

Mrs. Buck always thought and spoke of her husband as her poor husband. That was because he had died in the first year of their marriage. Perhaps a merciful Providence had taken him off before he had time to develop to any great extent the traits that made his father, old d.i.c.k Buck, a by-word in the county as being the laziest and most altogether no-account white man in Kentucky.