AN EVENING IN THE WOPP PARLOR.
The broad shaft of sunlight that flooded the dining-room where Nell
Gordon sat was suddenly darkened. Looking up she saw the tall straight
figure of Howard Eliot at the doorway.
“Lan’ sakes, here’s friend neighbor,” exclaimed Mrs. Wopp entering the
room from the kitchen, “yer jist in time to help this here pore
overworked teacher with some papers she brung home from the school.”
“P’raps I’ll hinder more than help,” Howard answered, grasping Mrs.
Wopp’s outstretched hand and looking questioningly at Nell.
“The work I am at now Howard, requires mostly a sense of humor. Just
look at this and ask yourself how I manage to keep my face straight
sometimes at school.” Howard took the paper handed to him and had
hardly read a line before his risibility was tickled.
Moses and Betty, hearing what promised to add spice to their evening,
quickly entered the room. Mrs. Wopp who always had to know the joke,
conspired at once to get rid of the youngsters.
“Moses, you git to the barn an’ hunt the aigs, an’ min’ you look in
the haystack; that ole yaller hen has been wantin’ ter set in the nigh
corner of it.”
“I did hunt the aigs,” lied the unhappy Moses who was afraid he was
going to miss something.
“Then where are they?” demanded Mrs. Wopp. “You are as bad as Anias
and Sapphire who was carried out feet foremost. Go when I tell you.
An’ you Betty, go upstairs an’ mend that orful, yawnin’ gap in yer
stockin’. Now we hev got rid of the younguns Howard, will you read out
what you was larfin’ at?”
Thus adjured, Howard began, while Mrs. Wopp leaned back in her chair
rocking vigorously.
“The cow is a useful animal. It has short legs and a cupple horns
sometimes very sharp. Some cows is black some is red, a cow can Ball
very loud. If you hear a cow Ball very loud keep on the other side of
the fense, she may have lost her calf and that is why she is Balling
very loud.
“Cows have a long tale. They wave it and it keeps there back cool,
sometimes they wave it to keep off flies and other insecks. Cows
cannot run as fast as a hoarse but if she is chasing you she seems to
be running very fast. If she chases you pick up a tin can or pale and
hit on it with a stone. The cow will then stampeed. Cows have four
feet called hoofs. They are useful for walking this is all I know
about cows.”
“Well now Howard Eliot I carnt see nothin’ in that to larf at. It is
grand readin’. Do read another,” said Mrs. Wopp.
Picking up a second paper at random, “This is a composition on Alfred
the Great,” he explained.
“Alfred the Grate was a good king. He had a lot of trubel in his rane.
The Danes had come to Ingland and peeple did not no how to read and
rite. He bilt some skools and men called munks showed the peeple how
to read and rite the Danes were very crool they killed a lot of men
and Alfred the Grate had to run away and hide in a slew. One day a
woman where he horded asked him to turn some pancakes and King Alfred
the Grate forgot to turn the pancakes and they were burnt and the
woman boxed his ears and would not bord him no more. Alfred the Grate
beet the Danes.”
“I am not going to let you see any more compositions,” exclaimed Nell,
“You are just making fun of my poor children.”
“Howard Eliot may larf, but I think these writin’s is real clever.”
Mrs. Wopp grew thoughtful, “Moses’ Aunt Lucindy’s cousin, by marriage,
had talents fer literatoor. But the pore girl married an undertaker
an’ she writ no more.”
“Let’s all go to the parlor, Mar, and hev some music. It isn’t every
evenin’ we hev company,” said Mr. Wopp.
“Ef you wish it, Ebenezer,” responded his spouse though still somewhat
absorbed in the frustrated hopes of her relative, “jist wait till I
drawr up the blinds.”
The Wopp parlor was seldom entered, except on very special occasions
or when Mrs. Wopp with formality and no undue haste dusted the
furniture. The room had an air of solemnity and gloom, absent in the
cheerful dining-room where the family usually sat. A homemade rag
carpet covered the floor. Six slippery, horsehair chairs, one of them
a rocker, and a horsehair couch, which did not invite confidence, were
ranged stiffly around the sides of the room. In one corner was an
ancient organ, wheezy and querulous with neglect, and in another stood
a lofty what-not, on whose numerous shelves were deposited the family
treasures. Here, was a woolly lamb at one time beloved of Moses; there
his tin savings bank. Stiffly upright stood Betty’s wax doll Hannah,
seldom played with and then only for a few minutes at a time. Mrs.
Wopp was represented by a few shell boxes and a match box of china
flanked by a sleek china cat.
In the very centre of the room stood a small table swathed in a
hand-painted felt drape. On this reposed the huge family Bible in
which was chronicled the marriages, births and deaths of the Wopp
family during the last three generations.
On the wall hung a gilt-framed portrait, which rumor said represented
Ebenezer Wopp, a wreath of carefully made wax flowers, a silver
coffin-plate framed and bearing the name and date of demise of Mr.
Wopp’s mother, and two or three colored chromos.
“Betty, play us a toon,” requested Mr. Wopp who was very fond of
music.
Without further urging the child began to pick out with one finger a
complicated melody which Mrs. Wopp assured the audience was “Dare to
be a Daniel.”
“Aint that wonderful Miss Gordon? An’ Betty never had a lesson in her
life. She jist naterly takes to music,” said Mrs. Wopp complacently.
“It certainly is wonderful,” agreed Nell with perfect truth.
“Do you know that piece of music called ‘The Rose of Larst Summer’?”
inquired the musical connoisseur.
Nell confessed she had heard of it.
“Will you please play it fer us then, it is so touchin’. You will find
the music on the organ.”
While the strains of this enlivening classic were issuing from the
asthmatic instrument, Moses and Betty in the more secular atmosphere
of the hall were trying to fit the time to “Old Dan Tucker” their
favorite dance.
“Now ef you would jist play ‘Home Sweet Home’ with variations, my
dear, we’ll arterwards hev a game of crokinole. Crokinole is sich an
amusin’ game.”
Miss Gordon complied, then followed the old favorite with a two-step
played in as sprightly a manner as the organ would allow.
The young dancers in the hall found the change of music decidedly
exhilarating, as an occasional whoop testified.
“Bully fer you, ’s Gordon,” shouted the excited Moses leaping
furiously. “Keep her goin’. Ole Dan Tucker jist fits that toon.”
“Shame on you Moses, rampagin’ an’ bellerin’ there like a gang of
coyotes,” remonstrated his mother.
The strains of “Red Wing” having died away, Mrs. Wopp busied herself
setting up the crokinole board. “Me and Par won’t play, jist the young
folks,” she announced.
“Hurry Betty and set opposite me so’s we kin play together,” said
Moses, unwittingly giving Cupid his innings.
“You’re a brilliant youth Moses,” smiled Howard approvingly, “and sure
to get on in life. You don’t appreciate your own cleverness half as
much as I do.”
Moses stared, wondering at this unusual compliment.
In the meantime Mr. Wopp sitting precariously on the edge of the sofa
was examining for at least the two-hundredth time the red plush album
which contained the records of the Wopp family, past and present, in
picture form. He looked long and earnestly at a tin-type representing
a plump, velvet-coated, mop-haired boy of twelve. He sighed deeply.
“I must of looked like that Lize or the picter couldn’t of been took.”
Ruefully he rubbed his bald crown.
“The fleetin’ of youth is most sartin,” answered his wife, coining
this epigram on the shortness of life’s spring-time, and sighing as
she spoke. The good lady herself was looking through a stereoscope at
some views and finding one of Niagara Falls she endeavored to cheer
her despondent husband.
“Do you remember when we went to Niagary Falls on our weddin’ tower,
Ebenezer? We seen this here whirlpool an’ Goat Island an’ the hull
show. Them was the happy days.”
Mrs. Wopp rose from her chair and seating herself on the sofa beside
her husband took his thin hand in her substantial one, squeezing it
openly.
Out of the tail of her eye Betty noted this little touch of sentiment
and was much impressed.
“Be keerful how you shoot that checker Betty or we’re goin’ to git
beat,” admonished Moses. He found himself opposed to no mean
antagonists.
Awakened to the fact of her son’s existence and perhaps as an antidote
to her unusual display of sentiment, Mrs. Wopp spoke rather sharply.
“Moses, time you an’ Betty was in bed. You won’t want to git up in the
mornin’ an’ milk the cows.” Later left alone in the lower part of the
house she stood arms akimbo in the middle of the kitchen gazing at the
door through which Nell Gordon had just departed. Shaking her head she
said mysteriously, “I kalkerlate as how things is a-settin’ in that
way.”