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The Comings of Cousin Ann
The Comings of
Cousin Ann
By
Emma Speed Sampson
Author of
"Mammy's White Folks"
"Billy and the Major"
"Miss Minerva's Baby"
"The Shorn Lamb"
[Illustration]
Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago
Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1923
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
All Rights Reserved
The Comings of Cousin Ann
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Veterans of Ryeville 9
II Cousin Ann at Buck Hill 20
III Cousin Ann is Affronted 32
IV The Energy of Judith 44
V Uncle Billy's Diplomacy 58
VI A Question of Kinship 68
VII Judith Makes a Hit 77
VIII Cousin Ann Looks Backward 89
IX The Veterans' Big Secret 98
X Judith Scores Again 111
XI A Surprise for Cinderella 123
XII Jeff Gives a Pledge 136
XIII The Debut Party 144
XIV On With the Dance 156
XV Cinderella Revealed 165
XVI The Morning After 176
XVII Uncle Billy Makes a Call 185
XVIII A Cavalier O'erthrown 193
XIX Miss Ann Moves On 202
XX A Heart-Warming Welcome 212
XXI The Clan in Conclave 220
XXII A Great Transformation 228
XXIII The Lost Is Found 237
XXIV Blessings Begin to Flow 251
XXV Uncle Billy Smiles 262
The Comings of Cousin Ann
CHAPTER I
The Veterans of Ryeville
Ryeville had rather prided itself on having the same population--about
three thousand--for the last fifty years. That is the oldest
inhabitants had, but the newer generation was for expansion in spite
of tradition, and Ryeville awoke one morning, after the census taker
had been busying himself, to find itself five thousand strong and
still growing.
There was no especial reason for the growth of the little town, save
that it lay in the heart of rolling blue-grass country and people have
to live somewhere. And Ryeville, with its crooked streets and
substantial homes, was as good a place as any. There were churches of
all denominations, schools and shops, a skating rink, two motion
picture houses and as many drug stores as there had been barrooms
before prohibition made necessary a change of front. There were two
hotels--one where you "could" and one where you "couldn't." The former
was frequented by the old men of the town and county. It stood next to
the courthouse. Indeed its long, shady porch overlooked the courthouse
green. There the old men would sit with chairs tilted against the wall
and feet on railing and sadly watch the prohibition officers hauling
bootleggers to court.
There were a great many old men in Ryeville and the country
around--more old men than old women, in spite of the fact that that
part of Kentucky had furnished its quota of recruits for both Union
and Rebel armies.
In Kentucky, during the war between the states, brother had been
pitted against brother--even father against son. The fact that the
state did not secede from the Union had been a reason for the most
intense bitterness and ill feeling among families and former friends.
The bitterness was gone now and ill feeling forgotten. The veterans of
the blue and the gray sat on the Rye House porch together, swapping
tales and borrowing tobacco as amicably as though they had never done
their best to exterminate one another.
"As for Abe Lincoln," declared Major Fitch, an ancient confederate,
"if it hadn't been for him Gawd knows what we'd 'a' had to talk about
in these dry days. I tell you, sah, we ought to be eternally grateful
to Abe Lincoln. I for one am. I was a clerk in a country store when
the war broke out and I'd 'a' been there yet if it wasn't for the war.
I'm here to say it made me and made my fam'ly. We were bawn
fighters--my fo' brothers and I--and up to the sixties we were always
in trouble for brawling. The war came along and made a virtue of our
vices. My mother used to be mighty 'shamed when she heard we were
called the 'Fighting Fitches.' That was befo' the war, and one or the
other of us boys was always up befo' the co't for wild carrying on.
But, bless Bob, when we were called 'Fighting Fitches' for whipping
the Yankees the old lady was as pleased as Punch."
"What did they call ye fer not bein' able to whup us?" asked a
grinning old giant from the mountains.
"Nothin'--'cause we were able. All we needed was mo' men and mo' food
and mo' guns. We'd 'a' licked the spots off of you Yanks if we had had
a chance. You wouldn't stand still long enough to get whipped."
So the talk went on, day in and day out. Battles were fought over and
over but never finished. They always ended with a draw and could be
resumed the next morning with added zest and new incidents. One old
man, Pete Barnes, who had the distinction of being the only private
who frequented the porch at Rye House, always claimed to have been
present at every battle mentioned--even Bunker Hill and the battle of
New Orleans.
"Yes sirree, I was there; nothin' but a youngster, but I was there!"
he would assert. "There wasn't a single battle the Fo'th Kentucky
Volunteers didn't get in on an' the Johnny Rebs would run like hell
when they heard we were comin'. I tell you when we got them a goin'
was at Fredericksburg in '62--must have been 'bout the middle of
December. We beat 'em even worse than we did at Chickamauga the
following year."
"Aw dry up, Pete. You know perfectly well the Yanks got licked at both
of those battles," a jovial opponent would declare, but Pete Barnes
was as sure his side had won as he was that he had been present at the
surrender of Cornwallis and there was no use in trying to persuade him
otherwise.
The Rye House faced on Main Street and nothing happened on that
thoroughfare that escaped the oldsters on the porch. If anything was
going on all they had to do was move their chairs from the side porch
to the front, whether it was a circus parade or a funeral, or just
Miss Ann Peyton's rickety coach bearing her to Buck Hill, which was
the first large farm the other side of the creek, the dividing line
between Ryeville and the country. There were several small places but
Buck Hill the only one of importance.
On a morning in June the old men sat on the porch as usual, with feet
on railing and chairs tilted to the right angle for aged backbones.
Nothing much had happened all morning. The sun was about the only
thing that was moving in Ryeville and that had finally got around to
the side porch and was shining full on Colonel Crutcher's outstretched
legs.
"I reckon we'd better move," he said wearily. "Th'ain't much peace and
quiet these days, what with the sun."
"Heat's something awful," agreed Pete Barnes, "but it ain't a patchin'
on what it was at Cowpens."
"Cowpens!" exclaimed a necktie drummer who was stopping at the Rye
House for a day or so, "I thought Cowpens was a battle fought between
the United States and the English back in 1781."
"Sure, sure!" agreed Pete, "I was a mere lad, but I was there."
"It was in January, too," persisted the drummer.
"Of course, but we made it so hot for the--for the other side that
this June weather is nothin' to it."
There was a general laugh and moving of chairs out of the rays of the
inconsiderate sun.
"By golly, we're just in time," said Colonel Crutcher. "There comes
Miss Ann Peyton's rockaway. Where do you reckon she's bound for?"
"Lord knows, but I hope she's not in a hurry," said Judge
Middleton--judge from courtesy only, having sat on no bench but the
anxious bench at the races and being a judge solely of horses and
whiskey. "Did you ever see such snails as that old team? Good Golddust
breed too! Miss Ann always buys good horses when she does buy but to
my certain knowledge that pair is eighteen years old. Pretty nigh
played out by now but I reckon they'll outlast old Billy and Miss
Ann."
"I reckon the old lady has to do some scrimpin' to buy a new pair,"
said Major Fitch. "By golly, I remember when she was the best-looking
gal in the county--or any other county for that matter. She was
engaged to a fellow in my regiment--killed at Appomattox. She had
more beaux than you could shake a stick at, but I reckon she couldn't
get over Bert Mason. She wasn't much more than a child when the war
broke out, but the war aged the girls as it did the boys."
"I hear tell Miss Ann is on the move right smart lately," ventured
Pete Barnes.
"So they tell me," continued Major Fitch. "I tell you, havin' comp'ny
now isn't what it used to be, what with wages up sky-high and all the
niggers gone to Indianapolis and Chicago so there aren't any to pay
even if you had the money, and food costin' three times what it's
wuth. I reckon it is no joke to have Miss Ann a fallin' in on her kin
nowadays with two horses that must have oats and that old Billy to
fill up besides."
"Yes, and Little Josh tells me Miss Ann is always company wherever she
stays," said the Judge. "He wasn't exactly complaining but just kind
of explaining. You see his wife, that last one, just up and said she
wouldn't and she wouldn't. I reckon Miss Ann kind of wore out her
welcome last time she was there because she came just when Mrs. Little
Josh was planning a trip to White Sulphur and Miss Ann wouldn't take
the hint and the journey had to be put off and then the railroad
strike came along and Little Josh was afraid to let his wife start
for fear she couldn't get back. Mrs. Little Josh is as sore as can be
about it and threatens if Miss Ann comes any more that she will invite
all of her own kin at the same time and see which side can freeze out
the other. The old lady hasn't been there this year and she hasn't
been to Big Josh's either. Big Josh's daughters have read the riot
act, so I hear, and they say if their old cousin comes to them without
being invited they are going to try some visiting on their own hook
and leave Big Josh to do the entertaining. They say he is great on big
talk about family ties and the obligations of kinship but that they
have all the trouble and when their Cousin Ann Peyton visits them he
simply takes himself off and leaves them to do the work. Big Josh
lives up such a muddy lane it's hard to keep servants."
Miss Ann's lumbering carriage had hardly reached the far corner when
the attention of the old men on the porch was arrested by a small,
low-swung motor car of the genus runabout. No doubt its motor and
wheels had been turned out of a factory but the rest of it was plainly
home made. It was painted a bright blue. The rear end might have
applied for a truck license, as it was evidently intended as a bearer
of burdens, but the front part had the air of a racer and the eager
young girl at the wheel looked as though she might be more in sympathy
with the front of her car than the back. Be that as it may, she was
determined not to let her sympathies run away with her but, much to
the delight of the dull old men on the Rye House porch, she stopped
her car directly in front of them and carefully rearranged a number of
mysterious-looking parcels in the truck end of her car.
"Hiyer, Miss Judith?" called Pete Barnes. The girl must stop her
engine to hear what the old man was saying.
"What is it?" she called back gaily.
"I just said hiyer?"
"Fine! Hiyer, yourself?" she laughed pleasantly, although stopping the
engine entailed getting out and cranking, since her car boasted no
self-starter.
All of the old men bowed familiarly to the girl and indulged in some
form of pleasantry.
"Bootlegging now, or what are you up to?" asked Major Fitch.
"Worse than that--perfumes and soaps, tooth pastes and cold creams,
hair tonics and henna dips, silver polish and spot removers--pretty
near everything or a little of it; but I'm going to come call on all
of you when I get my wares sorted out."
"Do! Do!" they responded, but she was in and off before they could say
more.
"Gee, that's a pretty girl!" exclaimed the necktie drummer.
"I reckon she is," grunted Colonel Crutcher, "pretty and good and
sharp as a briar and quick as greased lightning. There isn't a girl
like her anywhere around these parts. I don't see what the young folks
of the county are thinking about, leaving her out of all their
frolics."
"Well, you see--" put in another old man.
"Yes, I see the best-looking gal of the bunch and the spunkiest and
the equal of any of them and the superior of most as far as manners
and brains are concerned, just because she comes of plain folks--"
"A little worse than plain, Crutcher," put in Judge Middleton. "Those
Bucks--"
"Oh, then she lives at Buck Hill?" asked the drummer.
"Buck Hill! Heavens man! The Bucknors live at Buck Hill and are about
the swellest folk in Kentucky. The Bucks live in a little place this
side of Buck Hill. There's nobody left but this Judy gal and her
mother. I reckon their place would have gone for debt if it hadn't so
happened that the trolley line from Louisville cut through it and they
sold the right of way for enough to lift the mortgage. They do say
that the Bucknors and Bucks were the same folks originally but that
was in the early days and somehow the Bucks got down and the Bucknors
staid up. Now the Bucknors would no more acknowledge the relationship
to the Bucks than the Bucks would expect them to."
"I should think anybody would be proud to claim kin with a peach like
that girl," said Major Fitch. "Her mother is a pretty good sort too,
but slow. I reckon when they get cousinly inclined they always think
of old Dick Buck, Judy's grandfather, who was enough to cool the
warmest feelings of kinship."
Nodding assent to the Major's remark, the veterans lapsed into sleepy
silence.