The Comings of Cousin Ann Part 6

Judith Makes a Hit

Judith reached home in time to prepare an excellent basket supper for her motormen customers. She was determined that her food should be so good it would advertise itself and every employe on the line would demand service. All of the potatoes were not peeled when she was ready for them, but her mother's explanation was that it seemed a pity to peel potatoes because there was so much waste in that method. It really was better to cook them in the skins. Judith kissed her and laughed.

"Another time we'll cook them in their jackets, Mumsy dear, but I cleared enough money this morning to afford to waste a few potato peelings. If I have a week of such luck, I'll have to get in more supplies. The girls in this county are just eating up my vanis.h.i.+ng cream and my liquid powder that won't rub off. I've made a great hit with my anti-kink lotion with the poor colored people. Half the female world is trying to get curled and the other half trying to get uncurled. I have got rid of dozens and dozens of marcel wavers, the steel kind that must dig into you fearfully at night, and bottle after bottle of that quince seed lotion, warranted to keep hair in curl for an all-day picnic, where it usually rains, and, if it doesn't, you fall in the creek to even up."

"Judy, you take my breath away with such talk and such goings on. I can't bear to think of your selling things to negroes. There is no telling what might happen to you if you don't look out."

Mrs. Buck had an instinctive dislike for the colored race. She never trusted them and was opposed even to employing them for farm work. She preferred the most disreputable poor white to the best negro. It was a prejudice inherited from her father and mother, who on first coming to Kentucky had done much talking about the down-trodden blacks, but being unable to understand them had never been able to get along with them.

Old d.i.c.k Buck had said of Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Knight, "They've got mighty high ideas about negroes but they ain't got a bit of use for a n.i.g.g.e.r."

Judith shared none of this prejudice. She liked colored people and they liked her and respected her. As she went speeding along the roads in her little blue car, there was never a darkey old or young who did not wish her well and bow low to her friendly greeting. Only that morning she had given a lift to a bent old man who was on his way to Mr. Big Josh Bucknor's, and thereby saved him many a weary mile.

"I'd take you all the way, Uncle Peter, but I can't trust my left hind tire up that b.u.mpy lane," Judith explained.

"Ain't it the truf, Missy? If Mr. Big Josh would jes stop talkin'

'bout it an' buil' hisse'f a road! He been lowin' he wa' gonter git busy an' backgammon that lane fer twenty-five years an he ain't never tech it yit. That's the reason they done sent fer me. The ladies in the fambly air done plum wo' out what with cookin' fer comp'ny an'

was.h.i.+n' up an' all. It looks like comp'ny air the only thing what don't balk at that there lane. They done sint a hurry call fer ol'

Peter, kase they got a notion Miss Ann Peyton air on the way. They phoned down ter the sto' fer me ter put my foot in the pike an' come erlong. They done got a phome message from way over yonder at Throckmorton's that dus' from Miss Ann's coach wa' a risin'. They ain't mo'n got shet er a batch er visitings when here come news that Miss Ann air a comin'. The ladies air sho' peeved an' they done up an'

said they ain't a gonter stay home an' Mr. Big Josh tell 'em ter go 'long if they's a min' an' he'n me'll look arfter Miss Ann."

"But she is at Buck Hill," said Judith. "I am sure of it. I saw her carriage turning in there this morning. Poor old lady!"

"I ain't seein' that she air so po'."

"It seems very pitiful to me for her never to be wanted, always coming and always having to pack up and leave. I'd love to have her come visit me. You know she and I are of the same blood, Uncle Peter--or did you know it?"

"Land's sake, Missy, I mus' a made a mistake. I been a thinkin' all along that I wa' a ridin' with ol' d.i.c.k Buck's gran'baby. You mus'

scuse me."

"So you are, Uncle Peter, I am Judith Buck, but I have just as good a right to be Judith Bucknor as Mr. Bob Bucknor or Mr. Big Josh Bucknor, or any of them."

"Well, bless Bob! Do tell!" was all the old man had time to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, as they came to the mouth of the lane, b.u.mpy in dry weather and muddy in wet, and he must leave the swiftly moving car and again trust to his old limbs to carry him on his way. His step was lighter, however, as he was the bearer of good tidings to all the white folks at Mr. Big Josh's. Miss Ann Peyton was not coming, but was making a visit at Buck Hill. He was full of other news, too, but was not quite sure whether it would be so welcome to the family.

"Not that she ain't mo' likelier than mos' er the young genderation,"

he muttered.

Judith had a slap-dash impressionistic manner of cooking all her own, following no rules or recipes, but with an unerring instinct that produced results. She said she cooked by ear. Whatever her method, the motormen were vastly pleased with the hot suppers she brought them and the word was pa.s.sed that the pretty red-headed girl at the last stop before you got to Ryeville would furnish a basket supper at a reasonable figure and soon almost every man on the line was eager to become one of her customers.

The first supper was difficult because she was determined to have it absolutely perfect, and her mother would insist upon getting in her way, offering various suggestions that might save a tenth of a cent.

"I tell you, Mumsy, I am not saving but making. Please sit down in this chair by the table, while I behave like the man in the lunatic asylum who thought he was a steam engine. I'm afraid I might get off the track and run over you. If you just stay still in one spot I'll get through. I can't go over you, I can't go around you and I can't go under you.

"There's the whistle blowing for two stops before ours and I'm ready.

Hurrah for a fortune, Mumsy!" and with a kiss Judith was off, bearing a basket in one hand and a tin cooler of b.u.t.termilk in the other.

The Bucks' farm was a triangle, bounded on two sides by converging roads and the other by the pasture lands of Buck Hill. The trolley line skirted the back of the farm, but turned sharply toward Ryeville before reaching the corner where the two roads met. The track curved about five hundred feet beyond the location of the stop where Judith had promised to meet the car with the suppers. There was a short cut from the rear of the house and Judith always took short cuts. Through the orchard, down the hill, across a stream, up the hill, skirting a blackberry thicket, through a grove of beeches, dark and peaceful with lengthening shadows falling on mossy banks, went the girl. She stopped a moment in the grove and looked out across the fertile country--everywhere more fertile than the Buck farm but nowhere more beautiful, she thought.

"I wish I had time to stop here longer," she sighed, putting down her basket and patting a great beech tree. "Thank goodness the Bucks were too lazy to cut you down and the Knights too slow." The honk of an automobile horn startled her. A seven-seated pa.s.senger car was coming down the road and in the distance could be seen the approaching trolley.

"Got to run after all," she cried. "That's what I get for making love to a tree." She flew along the path by the fence and reached the small station before the trolley slowed down for the stop. Breathless but triumphant she stood, large basket in one hand, b.u.t.termilk cooler in the other.

The big motor car, which was driven by Jeff Bucknor, was parked by the roadside. From it emerged Mildred and Nan in all the glory of fresh and frilly lawns and the latest in hats from a Louisville milliner.

"Now, Jeff," said Mildred, "you must get out and meet the bunch, and be sure you make no mistake. You are to fall in love with Jean Roland and no one else. She is the smallest and the darkest and much the best dressed. I do hope and trust it will be love at first sight. She is already just wild about you, without ever even seeing you, and when she sees you she is sure to topple over completely."

"What nonsense," scoffed Jeff.

Mildred ignored the presence of Judith Buck, although they could not help seeing her, since her blue cotton dress and her red gold hair made a spot of color that would surely have affected the optics of a stone blind person. Her color was naturally high, and frying chicken over a hot wood stove and sprinting for the trolley had added to it.

Nan did worse than ignore the presence of her neighbor, as she openly nudged her sister and whispered audibly:

"Look at her! What do you suppose she has in her basket?"

"Hot rolls, fried chicken, hashed brown potatoes, damson jam, radishes and young onions. Can't you smell 'em?" answered Judith quite casually, as though announcing a menu at a restaurant. At the same time she smiled brightly and looked at the Misses Bucknor with no trace of either embarra.s.sment or resentment. Jeff, who was plainly mortified at Nan's rudeness, laughed in spite of himself.

One of the things that irritated Mildred more than anything else about Judith Buck was that she seemed never to take offense, nor even to know when an insult was intended. Sometimes she would wear for a moment a quizzical smile, but usually she presented what she called a duck's back to intentional slights. Having satisfied Nan's curiosity concerning what was in her basket, she stepped forward to the platform and swung the cooler of b.u.t.termilk back and forth in the manner of a brakeman with a red lantern.

"I think they will stop here anyhow, Miss Buck," said Jeff. "Do let me help you on with your basket. I know it is heavy. I am Jefferson Bucknor. Perhaps you don't remember me, but I have seen you often when you were a child. I've been away from home a long time."

While Jeff was introducing himself to Judith the trolley had slowed up and stopped. Three young women and two young men were standing on the platform ready to alight. They were part of the house party and delighted greetings were exchanged between them and Mildred and Nan.

One of the young men, catching sight of Judith, gave only a hurried handshake to his hostesses and then sauntered towards the end of the platform where the girl in blue cotton was standing. He was a handsome youth, dressed in the latest and most p.r.o.nounced style. His manner and general carriage were indefinably impudent. He came quite close to Judith and peered into her face and only turned to join the others at a sharp call from Mildred.

"Tom Harbison, come here this minute!"

At Jeff's proffers of a.s.sistance Judith had smilingly thanked him.

"But I'm not getting on myself--only my basket and can of milk," she said.

"Then I'll help them on," said Jeff, although Judith a.s.sured him she was quite able to do it herself.

"Yonder she is!" the conductor shouted to the motorman. "I knew she would come. I never knew a red-headed gal to disappoint a fellow yet."

Eagerly the basket was seized by the hungry men and loud was their shout of joy over the can of ice-cold b.u.t.termilk.

"You'll find a note inside explaining how you can phone me if you want extras," called Judith. "See you to-morrow at the same time. Be sure and bring back my basket and dishes."

The trolley moved off, leaving the house party grouped at one end of the platform, Judith and Jeff at the other. It was plain that something was vexing Mildred and the smart young beauty by her side.

Jeff, however, was perfectly unconscious of being the cause of their annoyance.

"Thank you ever so much," said Judith. "You are a grand a.s.sistant to the chief cook."

"I am delighted to have helped you, but please tell me what on earth you mean by bringing food to motormen."

"Mean? Why, it's my business. I am caterer-in-ordinary to the six-thirty trolley and perhaps others," she laughed and looked him squarely in the eyes. For a moment, in spite of the persistent demand from Mildred for him to hurry, Jeff gazed into hers. He flushed a little and then with a hurried good-bye joined his sisters and their guests.

Mildred managed to have Jean Roland occupy the front seat by the driver. Jean was pretty, well-dressed and no doubt was fascinating.

Jeff remembered he was supposed to fall in love with her at first sight. Therefore he looked at her critically. She was all Mildred had promised, but Jeff found himself gazing over the head of his companion at a slender figure in blue gingham, disappearing over the hill.