The Comings of Cousin Ann Part 9

"Call it a dayboo party, but jes' don't say whose it is," suggested Colonel Crutcher. "There'll be plenty of jokes about it an' the smart Alecks will try to get the laugh on us because they'll be a thinkin'

we don't know what dayboo means an' we'll take the laugh an' keep it 'til we need it. Lets go get the invites struck off over to the Ryeville Courier right now."

The old men got busy immediately, although it was a lazy morning in June and the Rye House porch was shady and cool. Recruits were mustered in until they numbered ten, all anxious and eager to share expense and glory. First, the skating rink was engaged for the following Friday night. A caterer in Louisville was next called up by telephone and supper ordered, "with all the fixin's" that the latest thing in debut parties demanded. The band was engaged and the invitations set up in type and printed before the noon whistles blew for dinner. To be sure, the invitations did somewhat resemble notices of an auction sale, but what did it matter to the old men of Ryeville, who were undertaking this party for their favorite girl? This was the card:

You Are Invited to Attend a Debut Ball At the Skating Rink on Friday Night By the Old Men of Ryeville Dancing and Refreshments Free R. S. V. P. P. D. Q.

CHAPTER X

Judith Scores Again

The house party at Buck Hill was not proving the great success that Mildred and Nan had hoped for. All of the elements of pleasure and gaiety were present but to the anxious hostesses the affair seemed to drag somewhat. In the first place, brother Jeff utterly refused to fall in love with their prize guest and the prize guest, being accustomed to conquest, was peevish in consequence. Not that Jeff was in the least rude. On the contrary, he was especially polite and charming to all of his sisters' friends, fetching and carrying for them, dancing with them, playing tennis with the athletic, talking sentimental nothings with the romantic, and gravely discussing the Einstein theory with the high-brows. He did everything that was required of him but fall in love with Jean Roland.

The young people were gathered at one end of the long piazza. At the other end sat Miss Ann Peyton and Mrs. Bucknor. Miss Ann was engaged in her favorite occupation of crocheting thread lamp-mats and Mrs.

Bucknor vainly endeavoring to get to the bottom of the family stocking basket. The forenoon is always a difficult period in which to entertain a house party. It seems almost impossible to start anything, at least so Mildred and Nan felt. Even the most frivolously inclined do not want to flirt in the morning.

Everybody was feeling a little dull, perhaps from having eaten more breakfast than is usual in this day and generation, but Buck Hill held to the custom of olden times of much and varied food with which to start the day. One can't be very lively after shad roe, liver and bacon, hot rolls and corn cakes all piled on top of strawberries and cream, and the whole washed down with coffee.

Jean Roland smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn--not the kind you can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last hour and she was wearied with his witty sallies. Jeff and Willis Truman, a former cla.s.smate, had started a game of bridge with two of the more serious-minded girls.

"Bridge is one of the things I can't play," Jean had announced, and it was hardly complimentary that the game was being played in spite of her.

"By the way, Jeff, you know the t.i.tian-haired queen you were so taken up with at the station last evening that you couldn't greet your guests?" asked Tom Harbison. "I saw her again this morning."

"That little country person!" exclaimed Jean Roland. "No style at all to her."

"Not a particle!" echoed Nan.

"Oh, that little cousin of ours?" said Jeff, pausing in his game.

"Jeff, how can you?" cried Mildred. "She's a very common person who happens to be named Buck and now they are trumping up some foolish old tale that they were Bucknors 'way back yonder in the middle ages and that they are related to us. It is too ridiculous for words."

"Our kin all the same," teased Jeff, going on with his game.

"Right fetching skirt!" said Tom. "She was flirting with some men on the hotel porch when we drove by this morning. I reckon they were all cousins, too."

Jeff looked up from his game with a gleam of anger in his eye. He lost track of the cards, got confused, played from the wrong hand, blocked himself from a re-entry and promptly got set. All because Tom Harbison intimated that Judith Buck was not conducting herself with propriety.

"Here comes somebody! I saw a car turn in from the pike," announced Nan. "I hope it isn't any more company."

The attention of everyone was focused on the approaching vehicle. It was Judith's little blue car, skimming down the avenue with the usual speed exacted of it by its stern young mistress, who seemed bent on getting at least thirty-six hours out of the twenty-four. No one could have said she did not have style in her manner of turning a curve and neatly landing at the yard gate.

"Speak of the devil," muttered Mildred, "if it isn't that Judith Buck.

What on earth can she want?"

Judith, with her usual expedition, was out of the car and with sample case in hand was through the gate and half way up the walk before any one attempted to answer Mildred's query.

"Come to see your brother, perhaps," suggested Jean Roland.

"Ah, be a sister to me," sighed the fat boy, "please be a sister to me, Mildred."

Judith faltered not a moment, but marched straight up the steps. The young men all jumped from their seats and Jeff came forward with outstretched hand, but the girl pretended not to see the gesture. With a businesslike "Good-morning," she proceeded to open up her sample case and begin her salesman's patter: "I have here--" She was determined that the call should be purely a commercial one and that the Bucknors could none of them think for a moment that she sought or even desired any social dealings with them.

"Perhaps you had better take your wares to the back door. The servants may want to buy some," suggested Mildred, with more insolence than her family dreamed she was capable of showing.

"Thank you. A little later on I shall take advantage of your kind suggestion. I have a line of wares especially put up for back doors.

These things I have been telling you about are intended for front doors. Unlike most of the companies who have similar goods on the market, this one allows the agent to deliver the article the moment the sale is made," Judith continued in her salesman's manner. "I have a complete stock of goods in my car and while I sell by sample you do not have to wait for days and weeks to enjoy the really excellent bargains I am enabled to offer you. This now is a cleansing cream. No matter how clean you may think your face is, you will find after applying this you are vastly mistaken. Yes, disconcerting for the moment but comforting when you realize how much cleaner you are to be than your neighbor."

The young people had gathered around her and even Miss Ann Peyton and Mrs. Bucknor put down their work and came to see what Judith had to sell.

"Will any one of you young ladies let me prove the value of this cream by applying it to the countenance?"

"Anoint me," suggested the fat boy.

"Oh, no, this is intended solely for ladies. I have a masculine brand to which I am coming later. I will give a sample jar to any one who will let me demonstrate on her."

Judith's manner was businesslike and impersonal, but her color was heightened by excitement that she was determined not to show.

"Why don't you try it on yourself?" said Nan. "I bet yours will come off, all right."

Judith dipped her fingers in the jar and daubed her glowing cheek with the cleansing cream. Everybody laughed. "And now while we leave this cream on for a minute or two I will endeavor to interest you in my various powders." She gave an animated recommendation of powders from talc.u.m to insect.

"And now we will see the miraculous powers of the cleansing cream."

She took a handkerchief from her pocket and after a vigorous rubbing of the anointed cheek submitted the evidence to the audience.

"That is excellent," said Mrs. Bucknor. "Let me have a jar."

Next Judith demonstrated the virtues of a vanis.h.i.+ng cream and made several sales. Then the men must be told of an excellent shaving soap and healing powder. Scented soaps of all kinds were then displayed, shampoos, hair tonics, pocket combs, tooth brushes and paste.

The la.s.situde which had held the house party in thrall was dispelled.

It was almost as though Judith had applied a cleansing fluid to the atmosphere. She stood in their midst, displaying her wares with an earnestness and simplicity that was most convincing. Who could help but buy from the girl?

Miss Ann looked at her long and searchingly. So this was the girl that old Billy thought resembled his mistress. Her thoughts went back to her girlhood. When she was the age of this Judith could she have so demeaned herself as to go around peddling cosmetics and soaps?

Certainly not! She would have starved before she would have stooped to such an occupation. Starved! What did she know about starving? The morning she had gone away from Cousin Betty Throckmorton's without her breakfast was the first time in her life she had ever missed a meal.

Visitors in the blue-gra.s.s regions of Kentucky are not apt to be hungry. Would it have been better if, when she was young and strong, she, too, had endeavored to help herself instead of visiting, eternally visiting?

All of this flashed through the old lady's mind. Suppose there had been no cousins and aunts and uncles to visit--what then? Suppose she had been as this girl was, with no relations on whom she might depend for a.s.sistance. Suppose her relations had been poor. Suppose they had not wanted her. Not wanted her! Did they want her? Did anybody want her? So intently did she gaze on Judith's face that the girl's eyes were drawn in the direction of the old lady. Miss Ann would have liked to buy some of the toilet articles, but the quarterly allowance from her small estate was not due for many days and never was there money enough for her to indulge herself in the kind of wares Judith offered for sale. For a moment Judith stopped her salesman's patter and gazed into the eyes of Cousin Ann Peyton.

"Poor old lady!" was her thought. "It must be terrible to be old and idle. I wish I could do something for her just to let her know I like her. I believe I might even love her."

The sales had been larger than Judith in her fondest dreams had imagined they could be. Even the scornful Mildred purchased a few things that took her fancy and the young men, one and all, remembered they were sadly in need of shaving cream and tooth brushes, or if they were not in immediate need it was just as well to lay in a supply.

There was much laughing and talking and badinage, but through it all Judith held herself with a certain poise that gave all of the buyers to understand that she was merely the store-keeper and did not wish to be regarded in any other light.

Jeff was singularly silent while Judith was crying up her wares. He stood moodily aside, looking on but never offering to purchase shaving cream or other masculine requirements. He wished she had not come. He resented her placing herself in a position for all of these wretched persons to patronize her. He hated the look on Tom Harbison's face as he edged closer and closer to the girl, insisting upon putting down his name for one of every article offered for sale.

Judith, however, was so bent on being a salesman that she was absolutely unaware of the admiration she had evidently created in the eyes of young Harbison. When she went to her car to get the wares stored in the back it was Harbison who sprang forward to a.s.sist her.