While Mamie Little's father's house was getting fixed up, after being
dynamited, they went someplace else to live, and the only people that
lived across the street from us were the Burtons. There weren't any
Burtons to play with, because the only children they had was Tom Burton,
who was older than my sister Fan, and that summer he began taking Fan to
ride with the dandy horses and carriage the Burtons' hired man took care
of.
The Burtons' hired man's name was Jimmy, and everybody called him that
except Mrs. Burton--she called him James. I guess Jimmy was forty years
old. Or maybe he was fifty, or thirty-five, or something. He was thin
and balder than hired men generally are, and his only bad habit was
putting angle worms in a pickle bottle and setting the bottle in the
sun to dissolve the worms into angle-worm oil for his rheumatism in the
winter; but summer was when the worms were, so he had to get a lot of
worms in the summer to last through the winter.
Well, Jimmy had been with the Burtons six years and Annie, our hired
girl, had been with us on and off, for five years. I guess everybody
thought she hadn't any other name at all until one evening when
Jimmy came over and knocked at the back door and asked Mother if Miss
Dombacher was home. She wasn't, because she had gone to the Evangelical
Lutheran Church; but after that Jimmy used to come over, and Annie would
put two chairs out in the? yard under the apple tree and they would
sit and talk. Or Jimmy would talk. He would talk and talk and talk, and
every once in a while Annie would say, “Yes,” and, after she learned it,
“No.” So, after a couple of years, Jimmy began to hold Annie's hand
when he talked to her, and in a couple of years more they got engaged. I
guess they liked each other.
I was in our dining-room one day, looking to see if Annie had put any
fresh cookies in the jar in the closet, when I heard my mother say, “Oh,
Annie!” in the kitchen, as if she was sorry about something. So then
Annie said:
“I bin sorry to go avay, too, ma'am, but it is right everybody should
get married once or twice.”
“I know,” my mother said; “but I don't know what I will ever do without
you, Annie.”
So then Annie cried, and there were no cookies, so I went out.
Well, it was like this: Jimmy had been saving his money ever since Annie
came to our house and now he had enough to get married on and buy a
couple of acres; so they were going to be married, and he was going to
leave the Burtons and raise garden stuff and peddle it. Annie was going
to raise chickens and sell eggs, and they would have a cow and sell
milk.
So now I come to the story part of the story. I guess what the story is
about is that sometimes it is a good thing for a fellow to have a girl,
because if Mamie Little hadn't been my girl maybe Jimmy and Annie would
never have been married.
There were two parts about the story. One was that a circus was coming
to town and me and Swatty weren't going; the other was that the
schoolhouse wore out and they built a new one.
The night before the circus was coming there was going to be a reception
in the dandy big new schoolhouse to raise money for a library. Everybody
was going to go, and I guess everybody old enough was going to take his
girl. Anyway me and Swatty and Bony got to talking about taking girls to
parties and receptions and things, and the first thing you know we said
we'd do it.
I guess I said Swatty was afraid, and Swatty dared me back, and we both
dared Bony, and so we wouldn't any of us take the dare. So Bony asked
Lucy and she said she'd go with him if my mother would let her. When
Bony told me I didn't believe him, but I asked Lucy and she said Bony
had asked her, and that Mamie Little was as mad as mad because I hadn't
asked Mamie. So I said:
“Aw! How could I ask her when I hain't seen her yet?”
“You could, too, see her, if you wanted to,” Lucy said. “You could see
her every minute of every day, if you wasn't a 'fraid-cat.”
“'T ain't so. I'm not a 'fraid-cat!” I said.
“'T is so, and you are! 'Fraidie-cat! You ain't going to take Mamie
Little, and you're her fellow!”
“I am, too, going to take her!” I said back.
But I wasn't going to take Mamie Little. I wouldn't have asked her for a
million dollars. But I didn't have to ask her. I met her that afternoon.
She was on the other side of the street and I just went along as if I
didn't see her. So she called across: “Oo-oo! Georgie! You know!”
“Aw! What do I know?” I asked back.
“You know! The reception!” she said. Well, I just went along and didn't
say anything. But that evening when I got home my mother said:
“I hear you are getting to be quite a beau, Georgie.”