MAUDE AND EDNA VISIT UNCLE PHIL.
Uncle Phil had invited Maude and Edna to come up to the “old hut,” and,
two weeks after their return from New York, they went for a few days to
Rocky Point.
They found the old man not much changed from what he had been when they
saw him last. A little stouter, perhaps, and a little grayer he looked,
as, whip in hand, he stood waiting the arrival of the train, his face
all aglow with delight, when the two young girls appeared upon the
platform, looking so pretty and stylish in their new spring dresses,
that he involuntarily gave a kind of low whistle, and said under his
breath:
“Guy, ain’t they stunners? They beat Ruth Gardner all hollow. And look
at that gal’s ankles, will you; it’s enough to make a chap older than I
am crawl, to see such things,” he continued, as the tops of Maude’s
boots became visible in her descent from the car.
In a moment both the girls had caught him round the neck, making him
very red in the face, and “awful ticklish at the pit of his stomach,” as
they kissed him more than once, and then kept hold of his hands while
they asked him scores of questions.
“There,—there; yes, yes; let me be now, can’t you; yes, yes,” he said.
“I’m about strangled with your hugs and kisses, and I not used to it,
and the folks in the car lookin’ on. It’ll give a feller the dyspepsia
to have his digester so riled up. These your traps, hey? Look like
little housen; shall have to come back for ’em sure, for Bobtail can’t
carry all creation” he continued, as Maude pointed out her own and
Edna’s baggage.
Uncle Phil was very proud of his guests and very desirous to show them
off, and making an excuse to see a man about re-setting a light of
stained glass which some “tarnal boy had broken in one of the windows of
his synagogue,” he drove the entire length of the street on which
‘Squire Gardner lived, and felt repaid for his trouble when he saw Miss
Ruth looking at them from her chamber window. He did not find his man,
but “Ruth saw the gals and the gals’ _hats_, which he was so glad were
not such all-fired lookin’ things as she wore and tried to make folks
think was the fashion. Maybe ’twas with a certain class, but needn’t
tell him that fust cut, who knew what was what, wore such ’bominable
things. Why, Ruth’s hat looks jest like a tunnel with a ribbon tied
’round it,” he said to the young ladies, who accused him of having set
up as a critic in dress, Maude promising to show him some fashions,
“which would make him stare more than Ruth Gardner’s tunnel had done.”
They found the nicest, cosiest tea waiting for them, and Aunt Becky was
quite as much pleased to see them as Uncle Phil had been. The front
chamber was in perfect order, and Uncle Phil had tried his hand at a
bouquet, made from daffodils and evergreens, and arranged in a broken
pitcher.
They had come to spend a week, and the days flew rapidly, each one
seeming to Uncle Phil shorter and happier than the preceding one. He had
a great deal to tell them about his church, which was nearly completed,
and would be ready for consecration in August, when the bishop had
promised to be there.
“But I tell you what ’tis, gals,” he said, as he sat with them inside
the church, which he had been showing them, “if there’s anything makes a
chap feel like cussin’, it’s buildin’ a meetin’ house, and seein’ to it
yourself; not that I do swear right out loud,” he added, as he saw
Edna’s look of surprise. “I hold on till I git the hiccups, and feel at
my stomach some, as I do when you two are haulin’ me over, only not
quite so—so—tural-lural, you know; first, thar’s the Orthodox pitchin’
into me, and the Unitarians, who kind of claim me, you know; and then,
if you’ll b’leeve it, the Second Adventists held some meetin’s in the
school-house, and pitched right and left into my poor little chapel;
called it one of the _ten horns_, and a _ritual_, and the Lord knows
what; but the wust of all was the divinity chap from New York, who came
out here, and preached a spell last winter; sort of a candidate, though
he sniffed high at the idee, and said he’d never stoop to that. He
preached in the Town Hall, and Ruth Gardner came up from New York, where
she spent a month, with her head fuller of jimcracks than brains, and
she jined the Episcopals, and helped run the machine, and rolled her
eyes up till you could see nothin’ but the whites, and got after the
minister, and set to callin’ him ‘Father,’ when, bless my soul, he
wasn’t a half-a-dozen years older than she! And between ’em they raised
the very old Harry with their processions, and boys dressed like girls,
and flags, and crossin’s, and curtcheys, which they called
_Jenny_-something, and the land knows what they didn’t do or would have
done if I hadn’t raised a row, and said they could do what they liked in
the Town Hall, and go to the old driver with their flummeries, but in
_my_ synagogue I’d have no such carryin’s on. I was a miserable enough
sinner, and was willin’ to own it, and had done a lot of things I didn’t
orto have done, and when I went to meetin’, I wanted to hear now an’
then a word about that Man who died over on Calvary a good many years
ago, and not all about _the church_, _the church_, and the _fathers_,
and the _medival_ age. You orto have seen how the priest and Ruth
Gardner looked at me when I got right up in meetin’ and spoke my piece,
for, I vum, I couldn’t stan it when they give the bread and wine first
to widder Jones’s two little boys, the wust scamps in town, who rob
gardens, and orchards, and birds’-nests in the summer, and who, only the
day before, had broke my gate, and denied it up hill and down. I
couldn’t keep still no how, and freed my mind and quit, and the next day
the priest and Ruth called on me,—he in his long frock coat, and she
with a chain and cross as long as my arm, I’ll bet. They as’t me what I
_did_ believe, and I said I believed the Creed, word for word; and the
Bible, and the Prayer-Book; and more than all the rest, I believed in
the Man that died; and I knew He never had any such goin’s on in that
upper chamber, nor on the deck of the ship, nor up on the mountain, nor
in that house in Bethany where He loved to stay. Everything with Him was
simple and plain as A B C. When the folks was tired, and sick, and
sorry, He said, ‘Come to me and rest,’ and He didn’t drive ’em crazy
with forty-’leven ceremonies. ‘Come to _me_; believe on me, that I can
save you; that is all,’ and He will. I’m just as certain as that my name
is Philip. I’m a wicked old rat, but I do mean to be better; and I’ve
took to readin’ my Bible some, and I say the Lord’s Prayer every night
when I ain’t too sleepy.”
He was talking more to himself now than to the girls at his side, but
they both felt that though there was still much of poor sinful nature
clinging to the old man, he was making an effort to do better, and was
drawing nearer to Him whom he so touchingly spoke of as the “Man who
died.”
The building of the church had evidently been a great trouble to him,
but that was nearly over now.
The priest from New York had, soon after Uncle Phil’s “piece spoken in
meetin’,” given up Rocky Point in disgust, and returned to the city,
leaving the field clear for another man. That man Uncle Phil was
anxiously looking out for, as he said he meant to have things in running
order as soon as the house was consecrated.
It was a very pretty little edifice, and did credit to the good taste of
Uncle Phil, or his architect, or both. As yet he had no name for it.
Neither _St. Maude_ nor _St. Edna_ would do, and _St. Philip_, which
both girls proposed, sounded too egotistical.
“He wasn’t a saint,” he said, “and never should be, perhaps, and they
must try again.”
Then he asked, in a kind of indifferent way, the name of the church at
Allen’s Hill, where Edna had formerly attended. _St. Paul’s_ suited him
better, and he guessed “he’d have it christened after that curis chap
who had that thorn in the flesh.”
The next day when alone with Edna, he said to her:
“I kind o’ hoped at one time that you or Maude might be married first in
my new church, but she tells me there’s to be great doin’s at Oakwood
for her and that girl, George, who, it seems, is to marry Roy, when I’d
picked him for you.”
“For me?” and Edna’s cheeks were scarlet. “Roy would never think of me,
and, Uncle Phil, I want to tell you I can’t stay there after Miss Burton
comes. I made up my mind to that a long time ago.”
“Of course not,” Uncle Phil replied. “One house can’t hold three wimmen,
so come back to the old hut as soon as you please; there’s always a
place for you here. I shall be down to the weddin’, I s’pose; I promised
Maude I would, only you mustn’t try to put gloves on me, nor stick me
into a swallow-tail.”
Edna laughingly promised to let him have his own way in dress, and two
days after this conversation she said good-by to the old man, and, with
Maude, went back to Summerville, where the preparations for the great
event had commenced in earnest.