THE BACKWOODS COUSIN
MISS LUCRETIA opened the screen, and noticed the fine appearance of the
young man standing there. He was not shabby enough for an agent. Some
one had made a mistake, she supposed. She waited pleasantly for him to
tell his errand.
“Is this where Mrs. Carrie Burton lives?” he asked, removing his hat
courteously.
And, when she answered, “Yes,” his whole face broke into dancing
eagerness.
“Is this my Aunt Carrie? I wonder”; and he held out a tentative,
appealing hand for welcome. “I’m Donald Grant.”
“O!” said Miss Lucretia delightedly, “O!” and she took his hand in both
her own. “No, I ain’t your Aunt Carrie, I’m your Aunt Crete; but I’m
just as glad to see you. I didn’t think you’d be so big and handsome.
Your Aunt Carrie isn’t home. They’ve just—why—that is—they are—they had
planned to be at the shore for three weeks, and they’ll be real sorry
when they know——.” This last sentence was added with extra zeal, for
Aunt Crete exulted in the fact that Carrie and Luella would indeed be
sorry if they could look into their home for one instant and see the
guest from whom they had run away. She felt sure that if they had known
how fine-looking a young man he was, they would have stayed and been
proud of him.
“I’m sorry they are away,” said the young man, stooping to kiss Aunt
Crete’s plump, comfortable cheek; “but I’m mighty glad you’re at home,
Aunt Crete,” he said with genuine pleasure. “I’m going to like you for
all I’m worth to make up for the absence of my aunt and cousin. You say
they have gone to the shore. When will they be at home? Is their stay
there almost up?”
“Why, no,” said Aunt Crete, flushing uncomfortably. “They haven’t been
gone long. And they’ve engaged their rooms there for three weeks at
a big hotel. Luella, she’s always been bound to go to one of those
big places where rich people go, the Traymore. It’s advertised in all
the papers. I expect you’ve seen it sometimes. It’s one of the most
expensive places at the shore. I’ve almost a notion to write and tell
them to come home, for I’m sure they’ll be sorry when they hear about
you; but you see it’s this way. There’s a young man been paying Luella
some attention, and he’s going down there soon; I don’t know but he’s
there already; and his mother and sister are spending the whole season
there; so Luella had her heart set on going down and boarding at the
same hotel.”
“Ah, I see,” said the nephew. “Well, it wouldn’t do to spoil my
cousin’s good time. Perhaps we can run down to the shore for a few
days ourselves after we get acquainted. Say, Aunt Crete, am I too late
for a bite of breakfast? I was so tired of the stuff they had on the
dining-car I thought I’d save up my appetite till I got here, for I
made sure you’d have a bite of bread and butter, anyway.”
“Bless your dear heart, yes,” said Aunt Crete, delighted to have the
subject turned; for she had a terrible fear she would yet tell a lie
about the departure of her sister and niece, and a lie was a calamity
not always easily avoided in a position like hers. “You just sit
down here, you dear boy, and wait about two minutes till I set the
coffee-pot over the fire and cut some more bread. It isn’t a mite of
trouble, for I hadn’t cleared off the breakfast-table yet. In fact, I
hadn’t rightly finished my own breakfast, I was so busy getting to
rights. The grocery-boy came, and—well, I never can eat much when folks
are going—I mean when I’m alone,” she finished triumphantly.
She hurried out into the dining-room to get the table cleared off,
but Donald followed her. She tried to scuttle the plates together and
remove all traces of the number of guests at the meal just past, but
she could not be sure whether he noticed the table or not.
“May I help you?” asked the young man, grabbing Luella’s plate and
cup, and following her into the kitchen. “It’s so good to get into a
real home again with somebody who belongs to me. You know father is in
Mexico, and I’ve been in the university for the last four years.”
“The university!” Aunt Crete’s eyes shone. “Do you have universities
out West? My! Won’t Luella be astonished? I guess she thinks out West
is all woods.”
Donald’s eyes danced.
“We have a few good schools out there,” he said quietly.
While they were eating the breakfast that Aunt Crete prepared in an
incredibly short space of time, Donald asked a great many questions.
What did his aunt and cousin look like? Was Aunt Carrie like her, or
like his mother? And Luella, had she been to college? And what did she
look like?
Aunt Crete told him mournfully that Luella was more like herself than
like her mother. “And it seems sometimes as if she blamed me for it,”
said the patient aunt. “It makes it hard, her being a sort of society
girl, and wanting to look so fine. Dumpy figures like mine don’t dress
up pretty, you know. No, Luella never went to college. She didn’t take
much to books. She liked having a good time with young folks better.
She’s been wanting to go down to the shore and be at a real big hotel
for three summers now, but Carrie never felt able to afford it before.
We’ve been saving up all winter for Luella to have this treat, and
I do hope she’ll have a good time. It’s real hard on her, having to
stay right home all the time when all her girl friends go off to the
shore. But you see she’s got in with some real wealthy people who
stay at expensive places, and she isn’t satisfied to go to a common
boarding-house. It must be nice to have money and go to a big hotel.
I’ve never been in one myself; but Luella has, and she’s told all about
it. I should think it would be grand to live that way awhile with not a
thing to do.”
[Illustration: “HE HELPED WITH VIGOR”]
“They ought to have taken you along, Aunt Crete,” said the young man.
“I do hope I didn’t keep you at home to entertain me.”
“O, no, bless your heart,” said the aunt, “I wasn’t going. I never go
anywhere. Why, what kind of a figure would I cut there? It would spoil
all Luella’s good time to have me around, I’m so short-waisted. She
always wants me to wear a coat when I go anywhere with her, so people
won’t see how short-waisted I am.”
“Nonsense,” said Donald. “I think you are lovely, Aunt Crete. You’ve
got such pretty white hair, all wavy like mother’s; and you’ve got a
fine face. Luella ought to be proud to have you.”
Aunt Crete blushed over the compliment, and choking tears of joy
throbbed for a minute in her throat.
“Now hear the boy!” she exclaimed. “Donald, do have another cup of
coffee.”
After breakfast Aunt Crete showed her guest to his room, and then
hurried down to get the stack of dishes out of the way before he came
down again. But he appeared in the kitchen door in a few minutes.
“Give me a dish and some berries,” he demanded. “I’m going to help
you.”
And despite all her protests he helped with such vigor that by twelve
o’clock twenty-one jars of crimson berries stood in a shining row on
the kitchen table, and Aunt Crete was dishing up a savory dinner for
two, with her face shining as brightly as if she had done nothing but
play the whole morning.
“We did well, didn’t we?” said Donald as he ate his dinner. “I haven’t
had such a good time since I went camping in the Klondike. Now after we
get these dishes washed you are going to take a nice long nap. You look
tired and warm.”
Aunt Crete protested that she was not tired, but Donald insisted. “I
want you to get nice and rested up, because to-morrow we’re going
shopping. By the way, I’ve brought you a present.” He sprang up from
the table, and went to his suitcase to get it.
Aunt Crete’s heart beat with anticipation as he handed her a little
white box. What if it should be a breastpin? How she would like that!
She had worn her mother’s, a braid of hair under a glass, with a gold
band under it, ever since she was grown up; and sometimes she felt as
if it was a little old-fashioned. Luella openly scoffed at it, and
laughed at her for wearing it; but no one ever suggested getting her a
new one, and, if she had ventured to buy one for herself, she knew they
would have thought her extravagant.
She opened the box with excited fingers, and there inside was a little
leather case. Donald touched a spring, and it flew open and disclosed a
lovely star made all of seed-pearls, reposing on white velvet. It was a
“breastpin” indeed, and one fit for a queen. Fortunately Aunt Crete did
not know enough about jewelry to realize what it cost, or her breath
might have been taken away. As it was, she was dumb for the moment.
Such a beautiful pin, and for her! She could scarcely believe it. She
gazed and gazed, and then, laying the box on the table, rose up and
took Donald’s face in her two toil-worn hands, and kissed him.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said with a pleased smile. “I wasn’t quite
sure what to get, but the salesman told me these were always nice. Now
let’s get at these dishes.”
In a daze of happiness Aunt Crete washed the dishes while Donald wiped
them, and then despite her protests he made her go up-stairs and lie
down.
When had she ever taken a nap in the daytime before? Not since she was
a little girl and fell from the second-story window. The family had
rushed around her frightened, and put her to bed in the daytime; and
for one whole day she had been waited upon and cared for tenderly. Then
she had been able to get up; and the hard, careless, toilsome world
had rushed on again for her. But the memory of that blessed day of
rest, touched by gentleness, had lingered forever a bright spot in her
memory. She had always been the one that did the hard things in her
family, even when she was quite young.
Aunt Crete lay cautiously down upon her neatly made bed after she
had attired herself in her best gown, a rusty black and white silk
made over from one Luella had grown tired of, and clasped her hands
blissfully on her breast, resting with her eyes wide open and a light
of joy upon her face. She hardly felt it right to relax entirely, lest
Donald might call her; but finally the unaccustomed position in the
middle of the day sent her off into a real doze, and just about that
time the telephone bell rang.
The telephone was in the sitting-room down-stairs. It had been put in
at the time when the telephone company were putting them in free to
introduce them in that suburb. It was ordinarily a source of great
interest to the whole family, though it seldom rang except for Luella.
Luella and her mother were exceedingly proud of its possession.
Donald was in the sitting-room reading. He looked up from his paper,
hesitated a moment, and then took down the receiver. Perhaps his aunt
was asleep already, and he could attend to this without waking her.
“Hello; is this 53 M?”
Donald glanced at the number on the telephone, and answered, “Yes.”
“Here you are, Atlantic. Here is Midvale,” went on the voice of the
operator at central.
“Hello! Is that you Aunt Crete? This is Luella,” came another girl’s
strident voice in hasty impatience. “What in the world were you so
long about answering the ’phone for? I’ve been waiting here an age.
Now, listen, Aunt Crete. For heaven’s sake don’t you tell that crazy
cousin of ours where to find us, or like as not he’ll take a notion
to run down here and see us; and I should simply die of mortification
if he did. This is a very swell hotel, and it would be fierce to have
a backwoods relation appear on the scene. Now be sure you keep dark.
I’ll never forgive you if you don’t. And say, Aunt Crete, won’t you
please sew on the rest of that Val edging down the ruffles of the waist
and on the skirt of my new lavender organdie, and do it up, and send
it by mail? I forgot all about it. It’s on the bed in the spare room,
and the edging is started. You sew it on the way it is begun. You’ll
see. Now don’t you go to sewing it on in that old way because it is
quicker; for it doesn’t look a bit pretty, and you’ve nothing much
else to do, now we’re gone, anyway. And say, Aunt Crete, would you
mind going down to Peters’s to-day, and telling Jennie I forgot all
about getting those aprons to finish for the fair, and tell her you’ll
finish them for her? Do it to-day, because she has to send the box off
by the end of the week. And mother says you better clean the cellar
right away, and she wondered if you’d feel equal to whitewashing it. I
should think you’d like to do that, it’s so cool this warm weather to
be down cellar. And, O, yes, if you get lonesome and want something to
do, I forgot to tell you I left those three flannel shirt-waists all
cut out ready to be made in the upper bureau drawer of the spare room.
Now don’t read your eyes out the way you did the last time we went off
and left you, and have to wear dark glasses for a week, because I have
lots of things planned to do when I get home. I’m going to have Helena
Bates for a week, and there’ll be several lunches and picnics doing.
O, say, Aunt Crete, mother says, if there’s any more pie-cherries to
be had, you better put up some; and be sure and stone them all. I just
hate them with the seeds in. And I guess that’s all; only don’t forget
you promised to have all those buttonholes worked for me in those
underclothes I’m making, before I get back. Are you all right? Let
me see. There was something else. O, yes, mother says you don’t need
to get out the best china and make a great fuss as if you had grand
company; he’s only a country boy, you know. Say, Aunt Crete. Are you
there? Why don’t you answer? Aunt Crete! Hello! For pity’s sake, what
is the matter with this ’phone? Hello, central! O, dear! I suppose
she’s gone away. That’s the way Aunt Crete always does!”
Donald, a strange, amused expression upon his face, stood listening and
hesitating. He did not know exactly what to do. Without any intention
at all he had listened to a conversation not intended for his ears.
Should he answer and tell who he was? No, for that would but embarrass
Luella. Neither would it do to call Aunt Crete now, for they would
be sure to find out he had heard. Perhaps it was better to keep
entirely still. There seemed to be nothing serious at stake. Ruffles,
and shirt-waists, and gingham aprons for a guild, and whitewashing
the cellar! Nobody would die if none of them were done, and his blood
boiled over the tone in which the invisible cousin at the other end
of the wire had ordered Aunt Crete about. He could read the whole
life-story of the patient self-sacrifice on the one hand and imposition
on the other. He felt strongly impelled to do something in the matter.
A rebuke of some sort should be administered. How could it best be done?
Meantime Luella was fuming with the telephone girl, and the girl was
declaring that she could get no answer from Midvale any more. Donald
stood wickedly enjoying their discomfiture, and was at last rewarded by
hearing Luella say: “Well, I guess I’ve said all I want to say, anyway;
so you needn’t ring them up again. I’ve got to go out boating now.” The
receiver at the shore clicked into place, and the connection was cut
off.
Then the young man hung up the receiver at the Midvale end of the line,
and sat down to think. Bit by bit he pieced together the story until
he had very nearly made out the true state of affairs. So they were
ashamed of him, and were trying to get away. Could it be possible that
they had been the people that got on the train as he got off? Was that
girl with the loud voice and the pongee suit his cousin? The voice over
the telephone seemed like the one that had called to the girl in the
pony-cart. And had his eyes deceived him, or were there three plates on
the breakfast-table that morning? Poor Aunt Crete! He would give her
the best time he knew how, and perhaps it was also set for him to give
his cousin a lesson.