The Annals of Ann Part 9

I don't know how the news that we were going to do such a thing ever got spread, for we didn't tell hardly a soul--just mother and mammy and Mrs. Everett and the lady they board with and her married daughter, which all promised that they wouldn't ever tell, but somebody else found out about it, as you shall see.

We collected at the pasture gate at exactly a quarter to twelve and the minute the first whistle blew we raced to the well, for we were all anxious to see our husband if he was there. They said for me to go first as it was my well, but I said no, they must go first, because they were company, but Miss Merle said for me to look first, then she and Jean would look at the same time, as their husbands wouldn't mind reflecting together, being that they were kin.

My heart was beating so that I was about to smother, but I pulled my bonnet down low over my eyes to shut out any view except what was in the well, like mammy told us to do, and leaned 'way over and looked.

Now, up to this time, my diary, whenever I have mentioned Sir Reginald I was kinder half joking, and never really thought he would come to pa.s.s, as so many things in this life don't; but now I believe it's _so_. While I couldn't make out his face very well and don't know whether his eyes are blue or brown, and his nose Roman or not, still there was something glittering and s.h.i.+ning in that well which I firmly believe was meant to be Sir Reginald de Beverley and his _coat of mail_!

They were punching me and saying, "Ann, do you see anything?" till I couldn't tell whether he smiled at me or not; but I remembered my manners even on such a critical occasion, so I got up and let them look.

They commenced pulling down their bonnets like I did and leaned over the well. I was on the other side, facing the lilac bushes--and in less time than it takes me to write it, me being in a hurry and my pencil short, there was something happening that made me feel like I was in a fairy tale. I saw those lilac bushes move and the next thing I knew there was Mr. St. John. Not in a white vest, it's true, but looking beautiful enough, even in the daylight. He motioned to me not either to speak or move, though I couldn't have done either one, being almost paralyzed between seeing him and Sir Reginald at the same time. He tipped up right easy and leaned over the well, opposite to Miss Merle.

When Jean saw his image in the well she gave one overjoyed scream and leaned farther over to see more.

"Oh, it's Mr. St. John," she called out to her Aunt Merle, her voice sounding very deep and hollow, but joyful. "It's _Mr._ St. John!

_He's_ going to be my future husband!"

He and Miss Merle were about to kill themselves laughing, for Miss Merle had seen him from the first; but when Jean looked up and saw him he looked at her so sweet that you felt like you could forgive him anything he was to do, even the "i-ther and ni-ther."

"I'd like to accommodate you, Jean," he said, laughing and catching her hand with an affectionate look, although he is usually very timid and dignified, "but the fact is--may I tell, Merle?" And the way _he_ said "Merle" sounded like a whole _box_ of marshmallows.

Miss Merle smiled at him and then he told Jean if she would every _bit_ as soon have it that way, he would be her uncle instead of her future husband.

I was so afraid that she would faint or die right there in the pasture that I told them I heard mother calling me and ran as hard as I could tear.

She came over this afternoon to tell me all about it and was feeling strong enough to eat a small basket of wild goose plums.

"Oh, it was a terrible shock at first," she said, stopping long enough to spit out a seed, "but the _minute_ he said _uncle_ my love changed.

Why, Ann, an uncle is an _old_ person, almost like a grandpa! Anyway, they've promised that I shall be in the wedding, dressed in a pair of beautiful white silk stockings."

CHAPTER X

It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house, especially if he's at the _watchable_ age, although he's such a darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch for a minute by himself. And at times he won't be satisfied with anything on earth unless you turn up the mattress and let him beat on the bed-springs, which I consider a smart idea and think Cousin Eunice ought to write out and send to a magazine under the head of "Hints for Tired Mothers." But I say it again, there don't any of us begrudge him these many little ways, although it's hard to be literary with them; for when he smiles and "pat-a-cakes" and says "Ah! ah!" you don't care if you never write another line.

Mother made Cousin Eunice turn over the raising of him to her the very day she got here, for everybody knows, my diary, how a lady that's ever raised a baby feels toward a lady that's just owned one a few months.

"No _flannel_ on this precious child!" mother almost screamed the minute we got him off the train and started to drive home. "Why, it's positively flying in the face of Providence to leave his band off this early!" And mother looked at Cousin Eunice like she had done it a-purpose.

"Oh, Aunt Mary, please don't," poor Cousin Eunice said like she was about to cry. "For the last eleven months there has been scarcely a thing discussed in my presence but _belly-bands_!" (There weren't any men around.) "It seems if a woman ever has one baby her thoughts never travel away from flannel bands afterward!"

"But pneumonia! Cholera infantum! Teething!" Mother kept on, hugging Waterloo close.

"That's what _twenty-three_ of my neighbors tell me," Cousin Eunice answered, "then nineteen others say it's cruel to keep him all swathed up in this hot weather, while eleven said to leave it off until his second summer, and fifteen said for me to----"

"What does Doctor Gordon say?" mother asked, to change the subject off of the neighbors.

"He said, '_d.a.m.n those old women!_'" Cousin Eunice told her, which made her jump, although it looks like she has lived with father long enough not to.

Right after dinner they started up the talk again. Should Waterloo be banded or disbanded? They hadn't talked long when Mammy Lou came into the room holding something under her ap.r.o.n. She looked kinder mad and dignified at mother and Cousin Eunice because they hadn't asked her for _her_ say-so about bands.

"If it's entirely respectable for me to speak before I'm spoke to,"

she commenced, her voice very proud and haughty, "I'd like for you all to pay _me_ some mind. There's _two_ subject's I'm well qualified to speak about and one is babies. Ain't I done raised a bushel basket full o' little n.i.g.g.e.rs, let alone that one beautiful little white angel that's the peartest and sweetest of any in the state?"

Which made me feel very much embarra.s.sed with modestness.

"We all know that you made a good job of Ann," Cousin Eunice said very pleasantly just to pacify her. "What would you suggest about little Rufus?"

"_These!_" Mammy Lou said, drawing her hand out from her ap.r.o.n like a man on the stage dressed in velvet does his sword and we saw a string of speckled beans.

"Job's Tears," mammy told the company. "Ther ain't no need to worry about bands when you've got _these_! Ther nuvver has been a child that cut teeth hard from Adam on down if his ma put a string of these aroun' his neck----"

Cousin Eunice was beginning to say something nice when father spoke up and asked mammy who it was that put them around Adam's neck, which made her mad.

"Poke all the fun you want to," she said, "but the time _will_ come that you-all 'ull be thankful to me for savin' these for Mr. Rufe's baby, or I'm a blue-gum n.i.g.g.e.r!"

Lots of times I take Waterloo over to make Jean a visit, which is easy on everybody, for the folks over there love babies so that they relieve me of his weight the minute I get there and leave me and Jean free to do whatever we want to. She is teaching me what she calls "artistic handwriting" now, using an actress' signature for a copy. It consists of some very large letters and some very small ones, like the charts in an eye-doctor's office that he uses to see if you're old enough to wear spectacles.

Cousin Eunice has time now with so many folks to help tend to Waterloo to slip off every morning and go to a quiet place down in the yard with her paper and pencil and compose on a book she's trying to write.

Before she was ever married she wanted to write a book, and if you once get _that_ idea into your head even marrying won't knock it out.

Cousin Eunice says I'm such a kindred spirit that I don't bother her when I go along too, but she has a dreadful time at her own house trying to write. She don't more than get her soul full of beautiful thoughts about tall, pale men and long-stemmed roses and other things like that before a neighbor drops in and talks for three hours about the lady around the corner's husband staying out so late at night and what her servants use to scrub the kitchen sink. I told her I knew one lady that hated so for folks to drop in that she unscrewed the front doorbell, so she couldn't hear them ring, but she got paid back for it next day by missing the visit of a rich relation.

Rufe and Cousin Eunice may live to be thankful for the string of Job's Tears, but I reckon to-night Miss Merle and Mr. St. John wish that Job never shed a tear in the shape of a bean, for they were what a grown person would call "the indirect cause" of a quarrel between them. It's queer that such a little thing as Waterloo should be picked out by Fate to break up a loving couple, but he did; although I ain't saying that it was _altogether_ his fault.

This afternoon I took him over to Jean's and we were having a lovely time out on their front porch, enjoying stories of her former sweethearts and a bottle of stuffed olives. She told me about one she had last winter that she was deeply attached to. She would see him at a big library in the city where she loves to read every afternoon. She saw him there one time and got to admiring him so much that she would go up there every afternoon at the time she knew he would be there and get a book and sit opposite him, making like she was reading, but really feasting her eyes on his lovely hair and scholarly looking finger-nails.

"I never got acquainted with him, so never learned his name," she told me, jabbing her hat-pin deep down into the olive bottle, like little Jack Horner, "but he was always reading about 'The Origin of the Aryan Family,' so I'm sure he was a young Mr. Aryan."

I told her I certainly had heard the Aryan family spoken of, I couldn't remember where, but she said oh, yes, she knew it was a swell family and that I must have read about it in the pink sheet of the Sunday paper.

Then she said she had a souvenir of him, and, as I'm crazy about souvenirs, I begged her to go and get it, hoping very much that it was a miniature on ivory set in diamonds.

"What is it?" I kept asking her, as she was trying to get her legs untangled out of her petticoats to get up and go after it; we were sitting flat down on the floor, which sometimes tangles your heels dreadfully. Finally she got up, tearing a piece of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g out, which she did up in a little ball and threw away, so her mother would lay it on the washerwoman when she saw the tear.

"_Ashes_;" she told me, kinder whispery, after she had reached the front door, for she was afraid somebody would hear; but it gave me a terrible feeling and I wondered how she got them away from his relations and whether she had to go to the graveyard in the middle of the night to do it or not. I comforted myself with the thought that they would be in a prettily ornamented urn, even if they were ashes, for I had read about urns in Roman history; but shucks! when she got back it wasn't a thing but a pink chewing-gum wrapper full of cigar ashes that he had thrown away one day right in front of her as they were going up the steps to the library.

Before I had time to tell her how disappointed I was there came a picture-taking man up the front walk and asked us to let him take Waterloo's picture for some post-cards. If you were pleased you could buy them and if you weren't you didn't have to. But he knew of course there wouldn't any lady be hardhearted enough not to buy a picture of her own baby.

Nothing could have delighted us more, unless the man had said take _our_ pictures; and Jean remarked that Waterloo ought to be fixed up funny to correspond with the string of beads around his neck. She ran and got a pair of overalls that belonged to the lady she boards with's little boy and we stuffed Waterloo in. He looked too cute for anything and we was just settling him down good for the picture when Jean spoke up again and said oh, wasn't it a pity that he didn't have any hair on his head, as hair showed up so well in a picture. I told her it was aristocratic not to have hair when you're a baby, on your head.

She said shucks! how could anything connected with a baby be aristocratic? This made me mad and I told her maybe she didn't know what it was to be aristocratic. She said she did, too; it was aristocratic to have a wide front porch to your house and to eat sweetbreads when you were dining in a hotel. I was thinking up something else to say when the picture-taking man said hurry up. There is a great deal more to this, but it is so late that I'm going to leave the rest for to-morrow night. Anyhow maybe my grandchildren will be more interested to go on and read, for magazine writers always chop their stories off at the most particular spot, when they are going to be continued, just where you are holding your breath, so as to make you buy the next number of the magazine.

Well, in just a minute after we were talking about the hair Jean said she knew the _very_ thing! Her Aunt Merle was up on the far back porch drying her hair that she had just finished was.h.i.+ng, and had left her rat lying on her bureau. She had seen it there when she went to get the ashes of Mr. Aryan. She said it was a lovely rat, which cost five dollars, all covered with long brown hair; and she said it was just the thing to set off Waterloo's bald head fine. So she ran and got it and we fixed it on. He looked exactly like a South Sea Islander which you see in the side show of an exposition by paying twenty-five cents extra. (An exposition is a large place which makes your feet nearly kill you.) But the picture-man said he looked mighty cute and snapped him in several splendid positions.