You rogue, you! I meant to have written before. You’ve frightened us all
to pieces with your ghost that wasn’t a ghost, and your whipping that
wasn’t a whipping, and your measles that you didn’t have. Grandmother
may talk, but she’s losing her memory. You were red as a beet with ’em.
As if I didn’t carry you about all night and go to sleep walking!
Grandmother says, “Yes, indeed! bring Dorry, and let him stay a week if
he wants to.” Bless her soul! She’ll always keep her welcome warm, so
never mind her memory. And Bubby Short, too. Pray bring Bubby Short. I
want to see his black eyes shine. Don’t Benjie want to come? I’ve got
beds enough, and girls enough to work, and a great batch of poor
mince-pies that I want eaten up. Don’t see how I came to make such a
miss in my pies this baking. Your uncle J. thinks I skinched on plums.
There never was such a man for plums. I do believe if they were put into
his biscuits he’d think he’d got no more than his rights.
Your uncle J. says: “Tell the boys to come on. I’ve got apples to
gather, and husking to do.” They’d better bring some old clothes to
wear. This is such a tearing place. I’ve put my Tommy into jacket and
trousers. He used to hitch his clothes upon every rail. Such a climber!
I don’t know what that boy’ll be when he grows up.
I send you a good warm comforter, knit in stripes; and all the family
are knit into it, especially Tommy. The pink stripes are his good-boy
days, and the black ones are his naughty actions. I showed him where I
knit ’em in. That clouded gray and black stripe is for my two great
girls quarrelling together about whose work ’t was to do some little
trifle. I told ’em they should be knit in, big as they are, if they
couldn’t behave and be accommodating. That bright red stripe is for
Hannah Jane’s school report, all perfect. That blue stripe is for your
sister Georgianna when she made a sheet. It matches her eyes as near as
I could get the yarn. My blue dye is weak this fall. Indigo is high.
Your uncle J. says it’s on account of the Rebs feeling so blue. That
gray stripe, dotted with yellow, means a funny crying spell Tommy had at
table. I came home, and there he sat in his high chair, with his two
hands on the arms of it, his mouth wide open, eyes shut, and the tears
streaming down, making the dolefullest noise,--“O-oh, a-ah; o-oh, a-ah.”
Lucy Maria said he’d been going on in that strain almost half an hour,
because we didn’t have mince-meat for supper. That green stripe is for
the day we all took the hay-cart and went to ride in the woods. The
orange-colored one is for the box of oranges your uncle J. fetched home.
“A waste of money,” says I. “Please the children,” says he; “and the
peel will save spice.” Makes me laugh when your uncle J. sets out to
save. My girls and Tommy have got the very best of fathers, only they
don’t realize it. But young folks can’t realize. The pale rose-colored
stripe is for the travelling doctor’s curing your grandmother’s
rheumatics, and promising she never should have another touch of ’em if
she was careful. The dark red stripe is for the red cow’s getting choked
to death with a turnip. She was a prime butter cow. Any man but your
uncle J. would look sober for a month about it. But he says, “O, there’s
butter enough in the world, Phebe. And the calf will soon be a cow on
its own hook.” That’s your uncle J.
The plain dark purple stripe is for my Matilda’s speaking
disrespectfully to grandmother. She was sorry enough afterwards, but I
told her it should go in. That bright yellow stripe is for the day your
father went to market and got such a great price for his colt. The
bright fringe, mixed colors, is for us all in both houses, when we got
news of your coming home, and felt so glad. There’s a stitch dropped in
one place. That may go for a tear-drop,--a tear of mine, dear, if you
please. Do you think we grown-up women, we jolly, busy women, never shed
tears? O, but we do sometimes, in an out-of-the-way corner, or when the
children are all gone to school, or everybody is in bed. Bitterer tears
they are, Billy, than boys’ tears. One more stripe, that plain white one
in the centre, is for the little Tommy that died. I couldn’t bear to
leave him out, Billy. He had such little loving ways. You don’t remember
him.
There’s your uncle J.’s whistle. He always whistles when he gets to the
bars, to let me know it’s time to begin to take up dinner.