KETTLE
Beginning with Christmas Eve, there was a party every night for Betty,
and as wind and weather count for nothing where merry young people are
concerned, Betty prepared to go, in spite of the biting cold, and a
knife-like wind that came howling down from Labrador. Uncle Cesar was
to take her to the parties, in the little, old-fashioned rockaway,
drawn by the one horse which was all the stable of Holly Lodge could
boast. The homeliness of her equipage did not in the least disconcert
Betty.
"Because," as Betty said to herself, "everybody knows I am Betty
Beverley of Rosehill, and the Rosehill Beverleys can do as they please
about carriages and clothes, and a blessed good thing it is, as the
family is down on its luck at present."
Betty had a variety of euphemisms to disguise the unpleasant facts of
life. Poverty was being down on one's luck; simple clothes were a joke;
and shabbiness, a mere romantic incident, for such was the glorious
philosophy of pretty Betty.
There were, however, no sighs or regrets for Betty that Christmas Eve,
as she looked with shining eyes into her mirror. Her white gown, made
by her own clever fingers, fitted to perfection, and revealed all the
delicate loveliness of her white neck and her slender arms. Around her
throat was her great-grandmother's amethyst necklace, and her simple
bodice was draped with her great-grandmother's lace bertha. Her rich
hair, with its soft tendrils curling upon her neck, was adorned with
a wreath of ivy leaves, and tiny moss rosebuds from the rosebush in
the window of the sitting-room. This little wreath gave Betty the look
of a woodland nymph. Aunt Tulip, who acted as lady's maid, during the
intervals of her duty as cook, housemaid, and what not, was lost in
admiration, and suggested that Betty would "cert'n'y ketch a beau."
This simple flattery delighted Betty, especially as all the time she
was dressing her mind was fixed upon the charms of Lieutenant John Hope
Fortescue of the United States Army.
When Betty was quite dressed, and had given herself a final survey in
the glass, Aunt Tulip went down to see if the rockaway was hitched up
with old Whitey. Betty, left alone, blew out the candles, and, drawing
the curtains, looked out of her window once more at Rosehill, a mile
across the open fields. Yes, the house was lighted up cheerfully--it
was Betty's pet grievance that the place was unoccupied for such long
intervals. In some way, after that visit from Jack Fortescue, Betty was
more reconciled to Mr. Fortescue's owning Rosehill. She could imagine
how jolly it must be there with half a dozen young officers, and if
they were all as charming as Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue---- Betty
blushed at the remembrance of her descent from the top of the table
into Fortescue's arms.
While Betty was chasing these fancies, like white butterflies in the
sun, she noticed a small black figure far down the lane. It was coming
toward Holly Lodge, tramping with short steps through the crust of
snow. As the object drew nearer, Betty's keen eyes discovered that it
was a small boy--a very small boy. Betty wondered why so small a child
should be sent out in the winter night. When he came within the circle
of red light from the front door, Betty saw that the boy was black and
very ragged.
By this, it was time for Betty to go downstairs and show herself to
the adoring eyes of her grandfather. Colonel Beverley, sitting in his
great chair by the fire, surveyed Betty with profound satisfaction as
she marched solemnly up and down, and pirouetted before him to show her
new white satin slippers, with glittering buckles. From the wreath of
roses down to these little slippers, the Colonel found Betty altogether
adorable, and told her so.
While Betty was giving stern orders to the Colonel to go to bed
promptly at ten o'clock, and not to smoke more than two pipes, Aunt
Tulip came into the sitting-room from the nearby kitchen.
"Miss Betty," proclaimed Aunt Tulip, with the air of announcing a
catastrophe, "what you think done happen now? Them good-for-nothin'
niggers that come here from I dunno where, and brought a little boy wid
'em, done gone away--they tooken the boat to-day at the landin'. And
this heah boy as ain't got no father nor no mother, and say he doan's
believe he never had none, got skeered at the steamboat, and turn
'roun' and run away heah! What we gwine ter do 'bout him?"
"Bring him in," cried Betty, suddenly remembering the little boy she
had seen creeping through the snow.
Aunt Tulip disappeared and returned with a small colored boy, very
black, very ragged, almost shoeless, but with beady eyes cheerful as
Betty's own, and a row of shining teeth which he showed freely. The
solemn book of life evidently had no terrors for him.
As he saw Betty in her party gown, with the wreath on her delicate
head, a rapturous look came into the eyes of the waif, his grin
broadened, he seemed to have a vision of Paradise.
"Why," cried Betty, "he's as black as the kettle! What's your name,
little boy?"
"Solomon 'Zekiel Timons," replied the waif, now fairly laughing with
joy amid his rags.
"Where did you come from?" asked the Colonel.
Then Solomon 'Zekiel Timons, prompted by Aunt Tulip, told his story.
He lived with some colored people who were always on the move. Lately,
they had been living not far from Holly Lodge, and the waif knew Miss
Betty by sight, and thought she was "the beautifulest lady ever I see."
He did not know whether the colored people were related to him or not,
nor where he was born, nor anything except his name. He had not been
ill-treated, but he did not always have enough to eat, and he knew his
"clo'es was mighty raggety." The colored people were going somewhere by
the steamboat, and he had gone that day to the wharf with them, their
belongings packed on an ox-cart. But on reaching the wharf, and seeing
the steamboat, Solomon Ezekiel's heart had fainted within him. The grin
left his little black face, and his round beady eyes grew terrified
when he described in jerky sentences the horrors of the steamboat.
"There wuz two gre't wheels," he gasped, opening his arms wide, "as
big as dis heah house--an' they keeps on a-churnin' and a-churnin'!
An' a awful thing on top de boat goin' up an' down like dis"--here
Solomon 'Zekiel gave a very realistic imitation of the propeller of a
side-wheel steamer in motion.
"An' den"--his frightened voice sank to a whisper--"'fo' it reach de
wharf, de steamboat hollered--it jes' keep on hollerin' an' screechin'
an' de smoke jes' po' outen a chimley, an' de steamboat everlastin'
hollerin'. An' I wuz so skeered, I jes' run offen de wharf an' come
heah."
Solomon 'Zekiel coolly ignored the fact that the steamboat landing was
five miles away, and that he had trudged through the biting cold and
the snow, in his poor rags and broken shoes, all that distance--and he
was a very little fellow indeed.
"Have you had anything to eat since breakfast?" asked Betty, with
melting eyes.
"Naw, 'm," promptly answered Solomon 'Zekiel.
"And this is Christmas Eve!" cried Betty. "Now Aunt Tulip will take
you into the kitchen and give you a good supper, Solomon 'Zekiel--oh,
I can't stand all that name--you are as black as the kettle, so we'll
just call you Kettle for the present."
His new name and the prospect of supper seemed to delight the little
negro beyond words.
By that time Uncle Cesar had driven the rockaway up to the door, and
the Colonel was handing Betty in and muffling her up, as one muffles
up his chief and only treasure. Aunt Tulip brought out Uncle Cesar's
fiddle-case with his fiddle, for Uncle Cesar was an essential person
in that neighborhood, on account of his expert fiddling. Old Whitey,
a big, handsome horse, was dancing about in a manner so sprightly, in
spite of his thirteen years, that Betty felt certain he would make a
good appearance at the Christmas hunt.