J. D. Matthews spread his supper upon a log. He had delicacies which
created a very cheerful feeling in the party, such as always rises
around the thanksgiving board.
Zene sat at one side of the log by J. D. Matthews. Opposite them the
grandmother and her children, camped on chunks covered with shawls
and horse-blankets Seeing what an accomplished cook this singular
pedler was, how much at home he appeared in the woods, and what a
museum he could make of his cart, Zene respectfully kept from
laughing at him, except in an indulgent way as the children did.
“I guess we'll stay just where we are until morning,” said Grandma
Padgett. “The night's pleasant and warm, and there are just as few
mosquitoes here as in the tavern. I didn't sleep last night.” She
felt stimulated by the tea, and sufficiently recovered from the
languor which follows extreme anxiety, to linger up watching the
fire, allowing the children to linger also, while J. D. Matthews put
his cupboard to rights after supper.
It was funny to see his fat hands dabbling in dishwater; he laughed
as much about--it as aunt Corinne did.
Grandma Padgett removed the sleeping child from his cart, and after
trying vainly to make her eat or arouse herself, put her in the bed
in the tent, attired in one of aunt Corinne's gowns.
“She was just as helpless as a young baby,” said Grandma Padgett,
sitting down again by the fire. “I'll have a doctor look at that
child when we go through Richmond. She acts like she'd been drugged.”
J. D. Matthews having finished--his dishwashing, sat down in the
shadow some distance from the outspoken woman in spectacles, and her
family.
“Now come up here,” urged aunt Corinne, “and sing it all over--what
you was singing before Ma Padgett came.”
J. D. ducked his head and chuckled, but remained in his shadow.
“Awh-come on,” urged Robert Day “Zene'll sing 'Barb'ry Allen' if
you'll sing your song again.”
Zene glanced uneasily at Grandma Padgett, and said he must look at
the horses. “Barb'ry Allen” was a ballad he had indulged the children
with when at a distance from her ears.
But the tea and the hour, and her Virginia memories through which
that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett
propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J.
D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only “Barb'ry Allen” was sung,
but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal twanging and much
personal enjoyment.
“It's why he didn't ever get married,” explained aunt Corinne,
constituting herself prologue.
“I should think he needn't make any excuses for that,” remarked
Grandma Padgett, smiling.
J. D. sawed back and forth on a log, his silly face rosy with
pleasure over the tale of his own woes:
O, I went to a friend's house,
The friend says “Come in.
Take a hot cup of coffee,
O where have you been?”
It's down to the Squi-er's
With a license I went,
And my good Sunday clothes on,
To marry intent.
“O where is the lady?”
The good Squi-er, says he.
“O she's gone with a wed'wer
That is not poor J. D.”
“It's now you surprise me,”
The friend says a-sigh'n,
“J. D. Matthews not married,
The sun will not shine!”
“Well, I think she was simple!” exclaimed aunt Corinne in epilogue,
“when she might have had a man that washed the dishes and talked
poetry all the time.”