But with the growth of this harmony with natural things, Judith
developed a constantly growing tendency to clash with the life of the
school and the home kitchen and the kitchens of the various relatives
with whom the Pippingers visited. She was considered by her aunts and
other female relatives "a wild, bad little limb," and her contempt for
the decent and domestic scandalized them more and more as she grew
older. Lena Moss could not for her life understand how it was that
Judith had learned to read and write and figure better than almost any
other child in the school; for she was anything but studious. In fact
she never seemed to pay the slightest attention to her studies. She
flatly refused even to try to learn Lena's long and carefully prepared
list of all the counties and county towns in Kentucky; and the battles
of the Revolutionary and Civil wars, with their accompanying dates,
found no lodgment in her mind. Instead of applying herself to these,
she munched apples, chewed slippery elm and sassafras, stared idly out
of the window, bedeviled the child who sat in front of her, cut folded
bits of paper into intricate designs or drew pictures on her slate,
the desk, the seat, the floor, the back of the pinafore of the girl in
front, any available space within her reach.
These pictures were the curse of Lena's existence. They were to be
found everywhere: on the desks, the walls, the floor, the blackboard,
the window casings. Outside they decorated the whitewashed wall of the
school building, the tops of big flat stones, the fences, the trunks of
trees where the bark had been stripped away, every place where a piece
of chalk or a bit of black crayon could function.
The pictures, invariably of human beings or animals, were usually
comic, satirical or derisive. That they showed great vigor and
clarity of vision would have meant nothing to Lena even if she
had known it. They were, in her phraseology, "not nice!" They were
frequently disrespectful. The morning after the visit of the county
superintendent, a large picture in white chalk was found on the
blackboard wickedly caricaturing the features of that august personage.
The picture was done in profile and exaggerated irreverently the large,
bulbous nose, the receding forehead, and the many chins reaching around
to a fleshy, pendulous ear. Poor Lena was hard put to it to find a way
to control this unruly member of her school. Having much less force of
character than her pupil, the advantage of years and vested authority
availed her little.
When asked why she had done thus and so, Judith's almost invariable
reply was: "Cuz I had to."
"Judy, why hain't you a better gal at school?" Bill asked one morning,
trying to look sternly at his favorite daughter across the mush and
milk. "Lizzie May says the teacher has a heap o' grief with you. Why
don't you mind the teacher, Judy?"
"I do mind her, dad--all I can," Judith returned without looking up.
She had the syrup pitcher in her hand and was absorbed in pouring
sorghum onto her plate in a very thin stream. Presently she set the
pitcher down and handed the plate across the table to her father.
"There, dad, ain't that a good mule? I drawed 'im with the blackstrap.
Lizzie May couldn't draw a mule like that."
"Ner I don't want to neither," put in Lizzie May disdainfully. "You
otta see, dad, sech pitchers as she draws all raound the school, an'
makes fun of everybody: the teacher an' the sup'rintendent an' her own
relations an' all. She'd otta think shame to herse'f!"
Bill was proud of his girl's ability to draw, but felt it his duty to
discourage her choice of subjects, seeing that the same seemed to be so
universally condemned.
"What makes you draw them kind o' pitchers, Judy?" he asked.
"Cuz I want to," replied Judith a little sullenly. "I see things; an'
when I see 'em I want to draw 'em."
"O law, she don't see no sech things, dad! Haow kin she? Nobody else
sees 'em!" exclaimed Lizzie May, outraged. "Why, the idea of her sayin'
she sees sech things!"
"Aw, shet up, Liz, an' tend yer own business!" snapped Judith, flushing
red with sudden anger. "Jest cuz you don't see nuthin don't mean nobody
else does."
She pushed her chair back from the table and began to gather together
her school books, slamming them on top of each other with angry energy.
Bill said no more; he was not a disciplinarian.
"It's your turn to wash the dishes, Judy," reminded Luella, who was
busy helping her mother put up the midday lunch. "Lizzie May washed 'em
yestiddy an' I did 'en day before."
"Why don't Craw have to take his turn washin' dishes?" inquired Judith,
who was still nettled from the recent argument.
"Craw's a boy. Boys don't wash dishes," adjudged Luella in a tone of
dead finality.
"I don't see why he hadn't otta," continued Judith, as she slapped the
plates together. "Far's I c'n see he ain't no good fer nuthin else."
The subject of this conversation, engaged in his favorite occupation of
doing nothing in a rocking chair by the stove, looked at his sisters
with a mild, impartial eye and said nothing. He was safe and aloof in
his masculinity.
"Land, hain't that a nice pattern this platter is burned into, Elly!"
exclaimed Judith, examining a small platter which she had just picked
up from the table. "Look here at all the nice squares an' di'monds--an'
all jes as even!"
"I don't see nothing nice about it," said Luella with a half glance at
the platter. "It's burned so's it won't never come white agin. It was
you done that, Judy, puttin' it in the oven with them slices o' hog
meat on it an' fergittin it till the grease was all burnt into smoke.
An' sech a stink as it made when mammy opened the oven door! A person
could hardly git their breath."
"Well, I like it anyway," said Judith cheerfully. "It's a good thing
somebody likes these old, cracked-over plates, cuz most all of 'em
is cracked over. I have lots o' fun lookin' at 'em an' seein' all the
diff'rent patterns they git burnt into."
"Yes, an' that's why it takes you so long to wash up the dishes. If you
don't hurry you're a-goin' to be tardy for school. The rest of us is
a-fixin' to start naow, an' you'll have to run to ketch up."
"I ain't a-goin' to ketch up if I don't want to," returned Judith. "An'
if I'm tardy, you hain't got no call to be a-frettin' yo'se'f."
This sort of bickering between Judith and her sisters went on daily in
the Pippinger home and increased as the children grew older. Luella
and Lizzie May, good, right-minded, docile little girls, looked down
upon Judith from the height of two whole years of seniority and felt
it their duty to try to make her as good, right-minded and docile as
themselves.
There was a half-story attic above the three ground rooms occupied by
the Pippingers, and this attic was the girls' bedroom. Here the three
slept together in a big wooden bed made all of twisted spirals. The bed
had a straw tick and in winter many thicknesses of patchwork quilts.
In summer one quilt was enough and often too much; for the windows
were small and the roof low; and on hot, breathless nights no air
seemed to enter. In summer the bedbugs came out of the walls and Aunt
Annie Pippinger saturated the bed once a month or so with kerosene and
corrosive sublimate, the odor of which lingered for many days after the
application. Between the windows stood an old cherry chest of drawers
which had once been a handsome piece of furniture, but was now much
scratched and scarred by hard usage. Each girl had one of the three
drawers, and here they kept their clothes and treasures.
Luella and Lizzie May had each a pincushion of silk patchwork in the
then popular "crazy" style, and fatly stuffed with bran. Luella had
a box the lid of which was encrusted with small shells surrounding
a red velvet pincushion shaped like a heart. In this box she kept
carefully folded bits of silk, velvet and lace; locks of hair cut from
the heads of all her relatives, wrapped in tissue paper and labeled
with the name of the grower, glass beads, fancy buttons, Christmas
cards, pressed flowers, small empty scent bottles and the like. Lizzie
May had a similar accumulation but hers was housed in a box with a
colored picture on the lid. This picture showed a young lady dressed
in a very low-necked pink satin evening gown and a white fur muff and
scarf, adjusting a pair of skates on pink satin slippers in the midst
of a snowy winter landscape powdered with frosting to make it more
realistic. Lizzie May liked this picture very much. She often took
out the box just to gaze at the lovely pink satin evening gown, the
delicate hands and the pink satin slippers.
Poor Judy had no such treasure box. She often looked at her sisters'
collections with envious eyes and wished for as much as two minutes
together that she too had some nice things. Somehow she had never been
able to collect things. Her drawer contained nothing but her little old
frocks and underwear and holey stockings thrown together in a tousled
heap, and perhaps a few pine cones and clam shells and odd pebbles that
she had picked up from time to time.
There were several colored pictures on the walls, mostly calendars of
previous years, much fly-specked and yellowed on the edges. One of
these, an advertisement for some kind of corset, represented the upper
two thirds of a young woman with bright pink cheeks and golden hair,
attired in a chemise and a straight-front corset and holding an Easter
lily in her hand. On one side of the chest of drawers was an old, much
faded chromo showing a child with a tremendously large head, dressed
in skin-tight red satin breeches and pale blue coat with lace ruffles
in front looking at a kitten which was playing with a pink ball on the
floor. This picture was enclosed in a frame the ends of which stuck out
beyond the picture, forming little crosspieces at each corner. On the
floor were several pieces of frayed rag carpet and before the bed an
oval braided rag mat.
Luella and Lizzie May spent a good deal of their time in this sanctum,
"redding up," looking over their treasures, exchanging confidences and
sewing patch-work blocks. But Judith hardly ever went into the room
except to go to bed. She liked her father's company and her father's
occupations better than those of her sisters. She stood at his side
and watched him as he nailed the bright new shoes with the bright new
horseshoe nails onto the hoofs of Tom and Bob. When he said, "Whoa!"
she said "Whoa!" with a faithful echo of his tone and inflection. She
loved to hear the cheerful strokes of the hammer and watch the sparks
fly from the piece of old railroad iron which Bill used as an anvil.
When he stretched a piece of wire fence she was there to hand him the
wire stretchers, the pliers, the hammer, the staples. And whenever he
mended spots in the old rail fence she caused Bill much inconvenience
by insisting on lifting one end of each rail. She liked to watch and
help him when he had a job of carpentry to do, a bench to make, or a
shelf or some new chicken coops for the spring broods. She ran and
fetched the hammer, the nails, the brace, and bit. She held the ends of
boards while he nailed them, dragged up more boards; and all the time
she watched eagerly. As he worked Bill chewed tobacco and whistled and
now and then broke out into a rather tuneless attempt at a song:
Grasshopper settin' on the sweet petater vine;
Turkey gobbler come up from behin'
An' peck him off'n the sweet petater vine
In the mo'nin', in the mo'nin'.
Judith pirouetting about, would sing the song after him, but with the
correct time and tune.
"Seems like you c'n beat yer dad at singin', Judy," Bill would say
proudly. "I never was one that could hang onto a tune. After a bit,
somehaow, it'd allus git away from me. Hand me them there pinchers--the
little uns with the shiny ends onto 'em."
Judith liked to work around the mules and was soon entrusted with the
task of leading them to water and pitching hay into their manger. In
the stable she would get down the curry brush and comb from the beam
where Bill kept them and curry them down with many shouts of "Whoa, ye
bugger!" and "Git araound there naow!" When there was an errand to do
at the neighbor's, she would ride Tom or Bob barebacked, guiding the
old mule proudly with tightly held bridle reins.
She liked to go with her father in the spring wagon when he went to
Clayton or Sadieville or took corn to the mill to be ground. The clear
morning sunshine, the sweet air, the life of the woods and fields all
about them mingled exultantly with the rattle of the wagon as it jolted
over the ruts in the dirt road, the strong, horsey smell of the mules
and the grinding creak of the brake as Tom and Bob held back on the
steep hillsides. Perched beside her father on the seat, she insisted on
driving and was indignant when Bill would take the lines from her hands
at the top of a steep hill or on the approach of another team.
Whenever they met a neighbor or relative--and almost everybody they
met was a neighbor or relative--Bill would rein up the mules, the
other team would pull up alongside, and there would be a long spell of
roadside visiting. There would not be much said, but it would take a
long time to say it; and Judith would sometimes grow impatient.
"Dad, why do you stop so long an' talk to folks on the road?" she would
ask.
"Why-ee, I dunno. I allus done so ever sence I was a boy, an' my dad
allus done so afore me. I like to know haow folks is a-comin' on. You
wouldn't have me drive right on with nuthin but a 'Howdy' would you?
'Twouldn't be neighborly."
The mill was a mile or so beyond the village on the bank of a pleasant
little stream which furnished it with water power. It was built of logs
mortared with mud, and grass grew in the chinks. It was a very small
mill the single business of which was to grind corn into meal for the
corn cakes of the neighborhood. When Judith and her father would drive
up, everything would be silent; not a sign of life but the turning
wheel and perhaps a chicken pecking along the path or a pigeon cooing
from the roof.
"Hey, Dave! Hey, Dave!" Bill would call, as he tied the mules to the
hitching post. Presently Dave Fields, the miller, would come hobbling
down the path from his house which stood a few rods away hidden among
locust trees. He was a shriveled little old man with one leg shorter
than the other from rheumatism and a pair of merry blue eyes twinkling
from under bushy white eyebrows.
"Waal, howdy, Bill. Purty weather we're a-havin' naow. Yer folks all
smart?"
"Yaas, we keep middlin' smart. How's yo'se'f an' the woman, Dave?"
"Oh, we git about; we git about. But we hain't what we onct was, Bill.
The woman had one o' them asthmy spells last week; an' my rheumatics
keeps me purty stiff. But of course we're a-gittin' old. We can't
complain. Haow much corn you got?"
"Oh, mebbe a couple o' bushel," Bill would answer, lifting the sack out
of the wagon.
"Waal, Judy, an' hoaw're you a-feelin' to-day? You're a-growin' to be a
great big gal. You'd best stop here with me an' mammy. We hain't got no
little uns no more."
And the old miller would chuck the little girl under the chin
good-naturedly, as she looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.
Then the mill would be put in operation and Judith would be fascinated
by the sight of the golden meal pouring into the hopper.
When the corn was ground, the old man took a tenth for his share and
put the rest back into Bill's sack. Then, but with no unseemly haste,
the meal was lifted into the wagon and the mules untied and turned in
the direction of home.
"Waal, Dave, you an' yer woman come over."
"Yaas, we'll be along by there some day. You come some Sunday an' stop
all day with us."
And at last they would go rattling away up the hill toward Clayton.
Then to Peter Akers' general merchandise store to buy flour and
sugar and coffee and a ten cent sack of candy for the children. There
were always a few loungers here and even in midsummer they stood from
force of habit about the tall, rusty, pot-bellied stove, spitting
tobacco juice into the little sawdust yard which surrounded it. While
her father made his purchases and passed the time of day with the
loungers about the stove, Judith would walk about looking at the
bright-patterned calicoes and chintzes ranged on the shelves, the shiny
dippers and saucepans, the straw hats and piles of blue denim overalls,
the brooms standing upside down in a round rack, the gleaming hoes and
rakes and shovels with bright-painted handles. Around the walls just
below the ceiling ran a frieze of galvanized washtubs and tin plated
boilers. The showcase stood on the counter near the door, and Judith,
having passed all the other things in review, would flatten the end
of her small nose against the glass looking at pink and yellow cakes
of scented soap, barber's pole sticks of candy, bottles of ink, silk
ribbons, tooth brushes, pads of letter paper, alarm clocks, pocket
combs, and sheets of tanglefoot fly paper, arranged much as they have
been here enumerated. She never tired of doing this. To her the store
was a vast emporium capable of satisfying every human need or whim. She
rarely teased Bill to buy her a ribbon or a toy, partly because she
knew that he needed the money for horseshoe nails and flour; and partly
because there was nothing here that she really wanted very much for
herself. She felt no acute need in her own life for any of the contents
of the showcase; but she regarded them none the less with deep respect
and admiration.
Often Peter Akers, a baldish, pot-bellied man with a flabby face
and old-fashioned sideboards, would lean across the counter with
professional affability and chuck the little girl under the chin.
"Waal, Judy, you like to come in taown with yer dad? You'd best stay
here an' keep store with me. Wouldn't you like to help keep store?"
Judith, looking straight at him with level, grave eyes, would answer
never a word.
Then over to Jim Townsend, the blacksmith, to get some plate shoes in
case a neighbor should come with a job of horseshoeing to do. Once Jim
looked admiringly at Judith, whom he was really seeing for the first
time, although she had been there dozens of times before.
"You got a handsome gal there, Bill," he said.
"All my gals is handsome," answered Bill complacently. "But this one
here is more a boy'n a gal. She's her dad's hired hand, she is. She
helps me shoe the mules, she does."
"Waal, waal, so she's a blacksmith's helper! I'm needin' a hand.
Wouldn't ye like to stay here an' help me shoe hosses, eh, little gal?"
Judith looked him through and through and made no reply.
"Dad, do folks really want other folks' chillun to come an' live with
'em?" she asked her father, when they were back in the wagon.
"No, Judy, I can't say they do," Bill answered. "Other folks' young uns
is gener'ly wanted 'bout as much as other folks' ailments."
"Then why do they keep a-askin' me to come an' live with 'em?"
"Oh, I dunno. It's jes a way they have. They done like that when I was
a lad too."
"I wish they wouldn't," said Judith.
Then, as they drove back home through the sleepy heat of the noonday,
Judith would grow hungrier and hungrier and her one thought would be of
dinner. She could smell it as soon as they pulled up in the barnyard:
boiled hog meat and mustard greens and young beets and potatoes. How
good it tasted when at last she had a heaping plateful in front of her
with a generous tin mug of cool skim milk to wash it down!
Judith liked best of all the autumn season, when the sky was a hazy,
tender blue and the mellow sunshine lay like a film of golden tissue
over all the earth. Then there were plenty of apples to munch; and she
could go out into the garden and pick the big, red, juicy tomatoes
and eat them alive, as it were, before they had been slaughtered by
her mother's paring knife. Then the corn stood in the shocks and
the big, yellow pumpkins lay scattered among the stubble, suggestive
of plenty. The hickory nuts and black walnuts began to drop from the
early frosts, the trees turned bronze and russet and scarlet and the
warm air was full of bees and butterflies and other humming, buzzing,
fluttering things. The tobacco fields lay brown and bare and deserted;
but from the big tobacco barns there welled forth a fragrance that was
for these Kentuckians, the soul of autumn. Oozing out into the golden
sunshine from every crack in the great structures, it exhilarated
like an elixir, like a long draught of some rich, spicy wine. The big
doors, left open to allow a free current of air, showed the long,
yellowish-brown bunches hanging thick-serried in the fragrant gloom.
It was an intoxication to her at this time to be alive, to gather and
eat the good things that the earth so generously provided, to see the
autumn glory of the woods and roadsides, to feel the glow of the sun,
the warmth of the earth under her bare feet, and to sniff in the spicy
exhalations of the great barns.
On these autumn days the sun sank early; and this was the time that the
Pippinger children most enjoyed their play. There was something about
the chilly drawing-in of these October twilights that made them want
to leap and run and throw their arms about and utter wild, animal-like
noises into the gathering night. Judith was always the leader in these
games, and her wild abandon easily infected the others. Round and round
the clothesline prop they would fly in the game of "Go in and out the
Windows," and "The Farmer in the Dell," the long braids bobbing, the
boys' shirttails, escaped from their overalls, flapping in the wind
with the girls' petticoats. Then, tiring of this, there would be "Hide
and Seek," "Tom, Tom, pull away," and the inexhaustible "Tag."
Minnie, the cat, liked these evenings too, and so did her kitten
and the white cat that Judith had rescued from the Blackford boys.
The cats, like the children, were filled with a spirit of kobold
friskiness, as though their evening bowl of skim milk had gone to
their heads. In daytime they did nothing but stretch, sleep, yawn,
and wash their faces in the sun; but the chill of the autumn evening
brought to them also the spirit of adventure. In their strong, slinky
litheness, they jumped and darted and climbed; and the children
watching them envied them their perfect unison of body and spirit.
Minnie, in spite of all her years and the many times that she had been
a mother, was a kitten again. Nothing would do her but she must run
clear to the top of the clothesline prop, scratch mightily with her
front claws as though sharpening them, then make a sudden leap to the
grass and circle about like a mad thing. Her kitten darted up into the
lilac bush and peered down at the children with glowing topaz eyes,
then whisked away to circle after its mother. The white cat, frisking
in and out among the shadows, made the children think of ghosts.
Often a wind would spring up out of the west as the twilight thickened,
and the young Pippingers would run in the face of it, their hair blown
back, their arms waving wildly, their voices ringing shrilly into the
autumn night: little Valkyries of the hills.
Once, as they were playing a ring game by the barn, a big red moon rose
over the brow of the hill and showed their dancing figures silhouetted
sharply in black on the barn wall. The weird little shadow figures
seemed like a troop of goblin companions that had come to join their
play. The more wildly they pranced and threw their arms about, the more
reckless and drunken grew the little shadow creatures on the wall,
stimulating them in turn to a still greater frenzy of abandon. The wind
blew in their faces and brought subtle whiffs of fragrance from the
big tobacco barn down the ridge. The other children soon forgot this
evening; but to Judith it remained always as one of the exalted moments
of her life.
When the children were called in to supper after these autumn orgies,
they would come with ruddy cheeks and blazing eyes. Bill, looking
about the table, would say with satisfaction: "Them young uns ain't
a-lookin' poorly. Guess we won't need to call in the doctor for 'em yet
a spell."
The little glass lamp would be lighted in the middle of the
oilcloth-covered table; and there would be fried potatoes and a big red
platter of sliced tomatoes and roastin' ears steaming hot--a delicious
meal!
The winter season was not such a happy one for the Pippinger children.
Usually the weather would be warm and pleasant and the roads dry up
to Thanksgiving or even later. But then would come the inevitable
heavy frosts, followed by thaws and the cold, dismal rains that lasted
sometimes for days together. Then the young Pippingers had to stay home
from school and time hung very heavy on their hands. They bickered and
quarreled and yawned and stared idly out of the window at the drearily
falling rain and the dismal expanse of mud that would be there till the
April sun dried it up.
Sometimes when the house grew too unbearably dull and small, they
threw their coats over their heads and plodded through the heavy mud
to the barn to play in the corn fodder and consort with the mules and
chickens. It was a great relief to their mother to get them out of the
house. Around the barn, the sodden stable dung made a lake of stinking
filth and the children had to step very carefully from stone to stone
to avoid sinking into it. Inside it was fun for a while to jump about
in the clean fodder, to curry the mules and climb on their backs, and
to hunt for eggs in the loft and on the top of the beams. But they soon
tired of this and trooped back to the house, bringing with them their
boredom and a quantity of sticky mud which refused to wipe off on the
dirty bit of folded rag carpet before the door.
When the rainy spell was over Mrs. Pippinger heaved a sigh of relief
and started them off to school again. Dressed in faded caps and little
made-over, outgrown coats, too short in the sleeves and too tight
across the chest, they trudged through the mud, glad to be away from
the dreary house. When they got to school they were tired to the point
of exhaustion; and the mud, which had splashed over their shoe tops,
was drying in grayish flakes on their stockings. A tremendous wood
fire, built by some of the older boys, blazed in the big box stove and
made the room so hot that the children, tired from their long walk and
entering that close, heated atmosphere from the chilly freshness of the
outdoors, almost fell asleep over their copybooks.
It was worse still as the winter advanced and snow began to fall. The
melted snow mixed with the mud and made a thin, oozy, penetrating
slush, which usually meant wet feet for the Pippingers. It was not
always possible for Bill to provide five new pairs of shoes and five
new pairs of rubbers or overshoes with the oncoming of the bad season.
And so the shoes were often broken and the rubbers worn into holes in
the heels, which gave an easy entrance to the cold winter slush. For
this reason and because the air of the schoolhouse was kept so close
and overheated, coughs and colds were of very frequent occurrence. The
winter, in fact, was one long stretch of barking, sniveling, wheezing,
and nose-blowing, with sometimes a more severe attack which kept one or
other of the children from school. Mrs. Pippinger always kept on hand
in a stone jar a homemade cough syrup consisting of butter, sugar, and
vinegar. It did not seem to have any very great curative effect on the
coughs and colds; but the children were always glad to take it because
it tasted so good.
Then too, as the winter advanced, the pantry and smokehouse grew more
and more empty. "Roasin' ears," tomatoes, cucumbers and such garden
delicacies were gone with the early frosts. Sweet potatoes, dried out
on a shelf behind the kitchen stove, lasted a while longer, but were
soon eaten up. White potatoes, cabbage, and pumpkins lasted till about
Christmas. After that the frost always got what was left of them, as
the Pippingers had no cellar. Christmas, too, saw the last of the
apples; for Kentucky is too far south to grow good winter apples. The
cured and smoked hog meat hanging in the smokehouse sometimes lasted
till spring; but more often it was gone by February. The few jars of
jam and cans of peaches and blackberries that Mrs. Pippinger managed
to put up through the summer were turned into empty bottles almost
before the frost came. Then began a long, lean season of mush and milk
for breakfast, corn cakes and drippings for dinner, and corn cakes
and sorghum for supper. If Bill could get a job stripping tobacco or
shucking corn, there would be some canned goods and a side of bacon
from Peter Akers' store. But usually the tobacco was all stripped and
the corn all shucked before the lean season came on. Sometimes there
was a job of hauling to be had. But the hauling jobs were so few and
scattered that they did little more than provide the Pippingers with
the occasional sack of flour to make the Sunday and holiday treat of
hot biscuit. Bill made special efforts to keep flour in the house, for
he did dearly love a light hot biscuit.