The day Father got here was a beautiful day. The train was due at
six-thirty in the morning, but it never hurries and has only been on
time three times since it has been running, and Uncle Henson said there
was no use getting to the station until seven o'clock, but I told him
if he wasn't in front of the porch by six o'clock I'd send for Mr.
Briggs and go down in his automobile, and there was no need to say
anything more. Mention automobile to Uncle Henson and his back begins
to go up just like a cat's. There are only a few automobiles in town,
though a good many people have Fords, and several offered to lend me
theirs, but not wanting to hurt Miss Susanna, who has been sending the
same carriage to the station for over thirty years, I didn't accept
their offers, but went down in the coach, as Uncle Henson calls it.
Its top is still upholstered in a sun-shaped thing which was once
yellow satin and now tattered and torn, and hardly anybody ever rides
in it, but when a new boarder comes Miss Susanna always says, in that
queenly way of hers, "You will take the carriage to the station,
Henson," and Uncle Henson's old gray head bows as if at royal orders,
and they do not know they are playing a part that belongs to the days
that are no more. That is what Tennyson, I think, calls a time that
will never be the same again.
Uncle Henson's coachman's coat, long and faded and once brass-buttoned,
and a battered hat to match, are always put on to meet the train; and
when he held the door open for Father to get in the old, ramshackle
thing he did it in a way that could be sold for big money, if manner
could be bought, and Father got inside with equal elegance. After he
was in and Uncle Henson couldn't see him, he looked at me as if to ask
if I thought it would stand, and I nodded back yes, and slipped my hand
in his and hugged him again, I was so glorious glad to see him! He is
such a splendid Father--my Father is, I am so sorry for girls who
haven't one like mine, and not one of them has. He is the only one of
his kind on earth.
Everybody was on the porch to meet us when we drove up, and Miss
Susanna gave him such a gracious welcome, and was so sweet and stately
and quaint and lovely in her white dotted Swiss muslin dress which Miss
Araminta Armstrong says she has been wearing for six summers, and which
has the dearest little darns in it, that Father's face got real
flushed, and once I really believe there were tears in his eyes. He
might have been an ambassador at some court who was being received, for
at no court in Europe could a lady bow as Mrs. General Gaines bows, and
she gave her best to Father when he was presented. I don't like her,
but she certainly is an old swell. And then Isham (he's Uncle Henson
and Aunt Mandy's grandson, and totes water all day long from the well
up into the house, when he isn't playing a Jew's-harp in the sun) came
out and got Father's bags and things and took them up-stairs, and a
little later Uncle Henson brought up on a silver tray one of those mint
juleps, about which Father told Mr. Willie Prince, who made it, that
the half could never be told, and at eight o'clock we had breakfast.
Usually Father doesn't take anything at home but grape-fruit and
coffee, but that morning, and every morning he was here, he ate
waffles, and batter-bread, and beaten biscuits, and everything else
Miss Susanna would urge him to try, and he said he couldn't understand
how he could eat so much. I didn't tell him, but I think it was
because of the juleps. They're the best things for poor appetites ever
invented yet, Major Hairston says, and he ought to know, being over
seventy and never having missed taking two a day since he could fix
them for himself. After breakfast we talked for a while on the porch,
and then I took Father out to show him the town.
I wouldn't have taken him out if the day had been hot, but it wasn't
hot. It was one of those gorgeous days that sometimes come in summer
after a thunder-storm and which have the feel and taste of early
October; and being in the mountains it was cooler on that account, and
I could see Father breathe deep, and the tiredness began to go away as
we walked and talked. That is, I talked. He tried to at first, and
then gave up. Everybody in town knew he was coming--I had told
them--and they came down from their porches and shook hands with him,
and said they were so glad to see him and they hoped he was going to
stay some time, and that they would call as soon as he was rested, and
a whole lot of other nice things, so that Father almost got flurried,
he was so pleased and warmed up. At home he is always hurrying in the
morning to get to the office, and at night hurrying to get away, and of
course we don't have neighbors, and it was so queer to find everybody
so friendly and interested that by the time we got back to Rose Hill he
looked like another man.