AUNT JEFF REMONSTRATES.
"If it makes you feel bad to have me cross," Patty said one morning, in
answer to a remonstrance of Flossy's, "think how much worse it is for
me to be cross. I have to endure my own company all the time, you know."
"Well, Patty-pat," Flossy answered meditatively, "be happy and you'll
be virtuous. And that reminds me of Bathalina's room. Don't you think
that when it's papered--aunt Britann, didn't you say it was to be
done this week?--it might have a frieze, or a dado, or something, of
mottoes?"
"Of mottoes?"
"Yes. I've thought up some lovely ones. 'A woman is known by the
company she forsakes' is a good one. Then, 'The early bird dreads the
fire,'--you know how she hates to get up and build the fire."
"Water is more her element," said Will. "Can't you have--
'Bonnet and feather
She'll wash together!'
or something of that kind?"
"Oh, no! That isn't good. 'Be virtuous and you'll be disagreeable'
might do; and 'Marry in haste, and separate at leisure.' I'll think up
plenty of mottoes, aunt Britann, if you'll have them put on her walls."
"There comes her aunt Thomas Jefferson Gooch, at your service," Will
said, glancing from the window. "There must be a storm in the air to
bring her over so early."
He was right. Mrs. Gooch had come over to remonstrate with her niece
upon her relations to her husband.
"I couldn't rest, Bathalina," she said, "after hearing that that
unfacalized critter was round here again, for I knew just what a
fool you be. And it ain't no way respectable to have an intermittent
husband, always comin' an' goin,' like the old woman's soap. 'Tain't
what our folks has been used to. He's got all your money, hain't he?
I'm sure I don't see what more he wants. You let him have every copper
you had in the bank, I'll be bound."
"Well," retorted Mrs. Mixon, "what if I did? I put that money by for a
rainy day, didn't I? an' when it come, I spent it."
"Lawful sakes! I hope you didn't put it by for Peter Mixin's rainy
days! As I told your cousin Huldy, he's one of them folks that makes a
dreadful cheerful funeral."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Bathalina, in her confusion wetting her finger,
and putting it to the water in the boiler to see if it were hot
enough to sizzle, like a hot iron. "How confusin' you are, aunt Jeff!
'_Restless_ mortals toil for nought,' as the hymn says; and you're one
of 'em."
"I should think I was!" retorted aunty Jeff. "But I tell you ours is
a respectable family, and such culch as Peter Mixup was never brought
into it before; to say nothing of having a husband bobbing after you
like the tail of a kite, now here and now there!"
"Gracious!" exclaimed her niece fiercely. "How you go on! Don't get me
mad, or my sinful pride'll be too much for me."
"Sinful fiddlesticks! If you had any pride, you wouldn't have that
rag-tag-and-bobtail, Tom-Dick-and-Harry sort of a husband round you!"
"I shall go mad!" cried Bathalina, with an awful shrillness in her
tones. "You'll make me go a raving lunacy!"
"You are one now!" screamed her aunt. "You always was."
Instead of replying, Bathalina seized the rolling-pin, and began to
roll the pie-crust she was making with a vigor which bespoke the
conflict within. At the same time she burst out into her favorite
song,--
"'Tortured in body, and condemned in spirit,
No sweet composure'"--
"I always hide the rolling-pin from _my_ pastry," broke in aunt Jeff
with cutting emphasis. "Pie-crust is like millinery, the less it is
handled, the better."
"Sinful sakes!" exclaimed her niece, throwing down the rolling-pin. "I
try to live as I'll wish I had when I stand round my dying-bed; but if
you come here to fight, we'll just make a business of that, and let
other things go. But if you come peaceable, you just keep your tongue
still."
"Well, well," the visitor said, somewhat startled, "we won't quarrel.
But what is Peter Mixer dangling round here for?"
"Something or other between him and Frank Breck," Bathalina said
evasively. "I never asked him; for I found I couldn't get it out of
him, though I've tried more'n forty different ways."
"But what's he taking up with you again for?"
"Me?" demanded the other indignantly. "Ain't I his wife? Besides, he
says Hannah wants to make up with me, and leave me her property."
"Her property! Where'd she get any?"
"Well," Bathalina answered with an air of profound mystery, which in
reality arose from profound ignorance, "Hannah may not have been all
she ought to be, an' I ain't sayin' she has. But she may have property
for all that. And, since her daughter ran off with that Brown of
Samoset, Hannah's set agin her, and Peter's talked her over to consider
me. And if she does,--as why shouldn't she?--if she does"--
"Nonsense!" interrupted aunty Jeff sardonically. "Ef she does! Ef is
a crooked letter. And I thought our family was done with that Hannah
Clemens, or Smithers, or whatever she calls herself. I'm sure I cast
her off the day she went off with old Mullen."
With which conclusion she gathered herself together, and departed.
On the afternoon of this same day Burleigh Blood came to take council
with Flossy about his masquerade dress. In Montfield the young people
were thrown upon their own resources for costumes to be used in
theatricals or fancy-dress parties. Burleigh, motherless from boyhood,
and having no sisters, was forced to take Miss Plant at her word, and
come to her for aid on this occasion, being, if the truth were told,
but too glad to do so. The brawny fellow, with his magnificent chest
and his deep voice, was as ardently in love with this sallow morsel of
humanity as if she had been as like Brunhilde as he like Siegfried.
Her odd ways and harmless affectations were to him inexpressibly droll
and charming. He had at first been thrown into her society by the
caprice of Patty, who amused herself by playing upon the diffidence
of her suitor. It was not long before Patty began to suspect that
this clear-eyed giant had somehow touched her cousin's heart, which
proved large enough to contain him, despite her tiny person. Visions
of matchmaking danced rainbow-like before the eyes of Patty, and she
contrived that her quondam lover and her cousin should constantly be
thrown together; or, more exactly, she fancied she managed what would
in any case have come about. Later her own affairs had engrossed her so
completely, that she hardly even noticed how matters stood with Flossy.
"I am sure I do not know what to wear," Burleigh said, when he and
Flossy were alone together in Mrs. Sanford's parlor. "It is such a
bother to get up a rig!"
"I've thought it all out," Flossy answered. "You wear this long frock,
you know, and it will disguise your figure, and oh! monks do have such
good things to eat! This will do finely, don't you think?"
Her friend had not the least idea of her meaning, and only stared.
"It could be made of black cambric," Flossy continued; "and I'll lend
you a rosary, and you'll want an old rope to gird it in. You'll make a
magnificent monk."
"Oh! you mean me to dress as a monk."
"Of course. Didn't I say so? Sometimes folks don't understand me, but
I'm sure I don't see why. Of course I can't help that."
"No, of course not," he assented. "But how shall I get this robe?"
"Bring me the cloth, and I'll make it. Grandmother will help me."
"It is too bad for you to have so much trouble."
"Pooh! It's no bother. I'm sure I shall be glad to do it; and, besides,
I shall know you."
"That's so!" he said. "What are you going to wear?"
"Do you think I'd tell?"
"It is only fair you should, for you'll know me. Besides, I can never
find out anybody."
"Well," Flossy said in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'll tell you
something. Ease and Will--no, I won't tell that, for I promised not to,
and you mustn't mention it if I did. But I'm going to wear the dress
Ease wore in 'The Country Wooing.'"
"Was it red?"
"Red? No, indeed! You never know any thing about what a girl has on."
"I know I don't. I don't look at them enough."
"More likely," she retorted, "you look at the wearers, and not at the
dresses."
"No: only at you."
Let no reader suppose Burleigh was complimenting: he was only telling
the simple truth. Flossy blushed a little at his earnest frankness.
"You'd better look at Patty," she said. "She's ever so much prettier."
"I suppose she must be," he responded _naïvely_; "but I'd rather look
at you. I hope you don't mind."
"Oh, not in the least! Why should I? But this is all wool-gathering.
Let's arrange about your suit."
"But you haven't told me what your dress is."
"It's a white lute-string."
"Lute-string?"
"Yes, of course," she said, laughing at his puzzled face. "This
old-fashioned soft silk."
"Oh! I thought lute-string"--
"Would be like a guitar-string, I suppose; but it isn't. Don't you
remember the dress? It had a square corsage"--
"You'd better not tell me any more. It's an old-fashioned soft silk,
and it's white. That is all I could remember. I shouldn't know a square
corsage from--from a square handspike."
The friendship between Flossy and Burleigh ripened rapidly over that
monk's garb. She assumed great airs of superiority and authority over
him, which pleased Burleigh marvellously. She climbed into a chair
to fit the robe over his shoulders, boxing his ears when he insisted
upon turning around that he might see her; being at last forced to
compromise by letting him face the mirror, and gaze rapturously at the
image of her _petite_ person and pale face. But at last Flossy got so
embarrassed, that she declared she must at once be satisfied about the
weather, and led him off to consult Mrs. Sanford.
"Of course it will be pleasant next Tuesday evening," Mrs. Sanford
decided after a consultation with her beloved "Old Farmer's Almanac."
"The moon quarters in the west at seven o'clock that very night. I
wish," she continued with a sigh, as she returned the almanac to its
place, "that we didn't have to change almanacs every year. I just get
all my accounts down in one, and its year's gone by. And then I'd like
to keep an almanac for association's sake; but I suppose it wouldn't be
much good the second year. Things do pass away so in this world!"