Aunt Janey lived over the mountain on Juniper Creek, three miles west
of me, and carried all her supplies on her shoulder from the village
two miles to the east. On her way out she would take eggs, butter,
chickens, beans--anything exchangeable at the village store--and on her
way in would carry flour, coffee, sugar, salt, soda, and lard. She had
done this for forty years, and looked wiry and tenacious enough to do
it for forty more. She sometimes paused for half a day, and once spent
the night with me; but, unlike the neighborly highlanders, would never
turn a hand to help me. She watched me work as she might have attended
a play, and this did not make for the smoothness of my operations;
but I was always glad to see Aunt Janey. Her attainments did not
include a knowledge of the alphabet, but her mind sometimes revealed a
glitter that made me think her brown, withered body held an old-world
spirit--Greek, perhaps--a Periclesian favorite.
“I wasn’t meanin’ to stop,” she said, as her sack slid from her
shoulders; “but seein’ the big kittle smokin’ in the yard, I ’lowed
you’s makin’ apple butter, an’ I like to watch it poppin’. Don’t you
quit stirrin’. I’ll fetch me a cheer from the kitchen. The sun’s as
soft as an old blanket to-day.”
She returned with the chair, and continued: “You’ve got to watch apple
butter closer’n a creepin’ baby if anybody’s goin’ to _eat_ it.”
Did she know that I had burned up one kettleful? Though I had tried to
remove all trace of it, there might be a treacherous odor in the air.
“That’s so, Aunt Janey,” I said; “but I’m going to take time to empty
this anyway.” And I took up a tub of apple-parings. I could utilize
those parings in three ways, and for that triple reason I wished them
to disappear quickly.
“They’re tellin’ all around that you’re powerful agin wastin’ stuff,”
said Aunt Janey when I had returned, in a tone so intentionally
colorless that I became suspicious and defensive.
“I am. And I could have carried those parings to Sam’s hogs; but Sam
would be lazier to-morrow than he is to-day. And I could have made
vinegar out of them; but I’d have had to take Len from the field to
bring back the barrel that Serena borrowed last year. And I could make
jelly. But with all those fine jelly apples lying around in bushels on
the ground, why should I save parings?”
“You forgot beer,” said Aunt Janey.
“Beer?” I faltered.
I had elderberry wine, and blackberry cordial, and peaches brandied in
brown sugar as dietetic allurements, but had made no provision for beer.
“Best beer you ever drunk by a hickory fire in the dead o’ Jinniwary.
Stir, gal, stir!”
I stirred. “But I don’t drink beer,” said I brightening, “and nobody
ought to now.”
“You don’t eat pickle either--tomato-pickle, cabbage-pickle,
beet-pickle, pickylilly, onion-pickle, pickle everything. An’ you
_kain’t_ eat much p’sarves, but I noticed you had ’most all sorts when
I looked over your stock.”
“But the plain fruits and vegetables--everybody likes _them_.”
“You’re a leetle short on some of ’em, ain’t you? Had a nice lot o’
beans to spile on you, didn’t you?”
I had buried the contents of twelve large jars in the garden after
dark, hoping that my influence as a conserver would not be diminished.
How did she know? I looked up from my stirring and met a glance of
Aspasian dubiety. She didn’t know. She had been guessing. But my
start had betrayed me. As soon as I was caught, she became sincerely
consoling.
“Tut, gal, beans are always hard for a beginner. It was that run you
took off at night, I reckon. I knowed when I passed you’d be in the
night with it; an’ I knowed they’d spile, you was so flustered. It
takes a ca’m sperret to put up beans to stay. Leather breeches is
safer.”
She took up her sack.
“There’s a powerful lot o’ wild grapes this year.”
“Is there?” I said, so dispiritedly that she put down her sack.
“Biggest and juiciest I ever seen. A body ought to put up a lot o’
grapes. They’re so tonicky. An’ they make the nicest jelly there is for
the sick. Tarty like. Apple jelly’s too tame for a stomach ’at’s off a
bit. Not speakin’ agin yourn, seein’ you got such a power of it. An’
namin’ the sick, ain’t you never thought o’ puttin’ up mullin? There’s
enough for Europe an’ Ameriky too in your new ground, an’ it’ll shore
cure that winter cough people has--cure it right now. If you don’t mean
to break off at all, if you ain’t goin’ to stop _anywheres_, if I’s
you I’d fix up some good yarb medicines. You can send _them_ to the
soldiers. There’s shumake for a swelled throat, an’ boneset for the
ager, an’ pokeweed for rheumatiz, an’ spignet for consumption, an’ a
lot more I’ll show you if you go home with me some time. Things to he’p
folks, ’stead of a lot of stuff to chuck up the stomach an’ make ’em
sicker. S’pose you go home with me right now.”
“With so much to do?” I said. “Oh, I couldn’t!”
“There’ll always be something to do, gal. If we lived till we finished
up, the world ud be full of Methuselys, an’ no room for the young
folks. Nobody finishes. They got to _break off_.”
She shouldered her sack and started, pausing a rod away for one more
barb.
“You goin’ to gether yer sunflower-seed? I’ve hearn they eat ’em in
Rooshia.”
Aunt Janey was right: I had the uncomfortable habit of hanging on for a
finish that the gods would never uncover. And what could I do about it?
There was one answer--Serena. She could break off without a qualm. She
could sing the doxology while doing it, and give the Amen a sprightly
reverberation.
Without daring to pause, I started off, stepping as briskly as Aunt
Janey, but in the opposite direction. I would get Serena to come
and clear away every sign of conservation, and I would walk on the
mountains while she was doing it. If only I might find her in the
disengaged period she would be sure to observe between fodder-pulling
and sorghum-making!
As I neared Len’s cabin the odor of boiling syrup told me I was too
late. I arrived and looked drearily on the scene. A shouting boy was
busily driving the oxen that turned the cane-mill, which was spouting
with juice. More juice foamed in the boiler on the furnace. Len, his
seven children, three neighbors, and their children, were officiating
in various or the same parts. Serena was skimming the boiling syrup.
All the country round acknowledged her as the queen of “lassy-makers.”
She turned a heated face to me just long enough to say with the most
cheerful of smiles: “They don’t give me time to make my beds.”