INDIAN SUMMER
"Well, I guess this is about the last spell of pretty weather we're
going to have," sighed Fanny Foster as she sat herself down on Grandma
Wentworth's back steps and went right to work helping Grandma sort the
herbs and bulbs and the seeds she had been gathering for a whole week.
"I'm hoping not," said Grandma, "though when the air is like warm gold
dust, and the sun's heat just mellows you through and through, and the
last bobolink calls from the hill, why, a body just knows such perfect
days can't last. Still, I'm hoping it'll stay a bit longer, though I
can't say I'm not ready for cold weather."
"Oh, I guess everybody is," agreed Fanny with that joyous, bubbling,
luxurious note that Grandma knew so well. "I saw Mary Hagley polishing
her very knuckles off on that second-hand stove Mert bought from that
watery-eyed man from Spring Road who drives through here with the lame
buckskin horse and pieced-out harness. Lutie Barlow's got her fall
tinting and painting all done. She's painted the inside of her chicken
coops a bright yellow, so's to fool her hens into thinking the sun's
forever shining, and the inside of her stormshed a red, so's to make it
seem warmer when she goes out there on a cold day to the coal and wood
box. There ain't anybody can beat Lutie on color ideas.
"Minnie Eton's dyed her heavy lace curtains in coffee and has a new set
made for the dining room, besides having a picture of the third boy
enlarged for the parlor. She started crocheting the lace for a new
bedspread for her company bedroom yesterday. And--oh, my lands, I
forgot to tell you the rest of that second-hand stove business. You
see Mary was feeling pretty bad about having to put up with another old
stove and envying Cissie Harvey hers. Cissie's new parlor stove is a
monster, made seemingly of nothing but pure nickel and isinglass. Mary
went over to look at it and when she come home and took another look at
her old thing she just sat down and cried. She cried till she was too
tired to care and then went to Jessup's for some stove polish. On the
way she met Judy Parks who told her that Dick had a new kind of polish
that gave a beautiful shine without hardly any work. So Mary got that
and it proved to be all Judy said it was and in no time at all Mary
turned that old stove of hers into a shining glory. And just as she
was standing back admiring her work in comes Cissie, wringing her
hands. The baby had poked out every last one of those isinglass
windows while Cissie was in the kitchen warming up his milk. And there
you are. And there's people that say there is no God and no justice in
this world.
"Josephine Rand's starting in on her rugs and begging rags from friends
and enemies. She's going a little easy though since last week. She
cut up what Ted says was a perfectly good pair of his pants. He had
them hanging up in the basement and was hoping Josephine would wash and
press them some day. He kept them down in the basement because he knew
that if he left them in his closet she'd give them away to a hobo on
account of her always feeling so sorry for tramps and believing
everything they tell her. Ted says he always liked these particular
pants on account of them making him look slim and being made of the
same kind of cloth as his first long pair of pants that he got as a
boy. So he was cherishing them and Josephine goes and cuts them into
tatters. He's so mad, she says she don't dare leave a rag rug in his
sight.
"Mat Wilson and his wife ain't on the very best conjugal terms either.
It seems Mat has a felon right under his thumb nail, about the worst
place you can have one, he thinks. It's kept him awake nights and made
him miserable, so naturally he felt entitled to a good deal of
sympathy. And he got it. Everybody has sympathized so much that Clara
just got mad and said that that there felon of Mat's isn't half as bad
as the one that she had at the end of her thumb two years ago. She
says she got hollow-eyed and consumptive looking with hers but that Mat
looks about the same as usual, maybe brighter. Anyhow, they've argued
and scrapped about their felons so that Clara's aunt's gone off for a
visit to Ioway, and Mat says that there sure is a recompense for
everything in this world, even felons and domestic misery, and Clara
wants to know if he's meaning to insinuate that her aunt is a nuisance,
because if he is she ain't going to send his aunt the Christmas present
that she's got half done for her. But Mat won't say, just keeps
showing his thumb to everybody and talking about silver linings to
every cloud. There's no use talking, some men are aggravating.
"Mandy Jutlins don't know whether to have the telephone put in or not.
She says the Lord knows she has enough children to run all her errands
and take all messages and that the two dollars a month comes in handy
for a new pair of shoes. And if it's in she says more than likely
she'll be wasting her time listening to a lot of silly gossip. Of
course that was a foolish remark for Mandy to make, seeing all her
friends have telephones. Two or three's took it personal and aren't
speaking a word to Mandy but plenty about her. One of them is supposed
to have said that it's a fact that Mandy doesn't need a telephone, that
she talks enough without it, and that in her opinion the worst kind of
a gossip is the kind that stays at home the whole enduring time, never
taking pains to see how things really happen and always knowing
everything.
"Emmy Smith doesn't know what to do with her oldest girl, Eleanor.
Eleanor just won't wash the knives and forks and spoons. She'll scrape
and scald and polish the pots and pans and does the china beautiful,
but she will leave the knives and forks and even hides them away dirty.
Did you ever hear of such a thing? Emmy can't explain it unless it's
due to the shiftless streak in all the Smiths.
"Agnes Hooper's crab-apple jell is about all gone and here it's hardly
cool yet. Those boys of hers just want to live on crab-apple jell and
Aggie says she's got to the end of her strength and patience, that
Charlie'd better pull up and move out among the Mormons where he could
have a couple of more wives to help keep those boys filled up.
"Jennie Burton's sauerkraut isn't going to keep and hasn't turned out
well, she thinks. Fremy Stockton says it's because she forgot to put
in a little mite of sugar and altogether too much salt.
"Grace Cook's husband bought a whole pig from some farmer Bloomingdale
way, thinking it was going to be good and cold by this time. And Grace
has got up at four o'clock every morning for a week and stayed up till
midnight, trying to get that pig out of sight. She's rendered lard and
made sausage and salted and smoked meat till every crock is full.
Yesterday she was making head cheese, sick to her stomach and crying
because there were still the four feet to cook up, and she said she
didn't know how to cook them and that each one looked to her about as
big as the kitchen stove.
"So I just took off my hat and put those four pig's feet on the stove
to simmer, and I helped her to get the head cheese out of the way.
When there's two working and talking, why, the time goes and when we
turned around there were those pig's feet as tender as could be, so
when the children came in we sat down and had pig's feet with
horse-radish. Grace wouldn't touch them; said she had enough pig in
her system to last her ten years and she knew she'd break out in
gumboils.
"I suppose you've heard how Malcolm Gross thought he'd lay in a nice
supply of maple syrup for his buckwheat pancakes this winter, and how
the children went to tasting and forgot to cork the big can, and the
cat went climbing around for mice and bacon rind and knocked the thing
down. Florence says there's maple syrup tracked all over the house and
she says her rugs are ruined.
"It seems as if Grove Street was full of trouble, for while Grace was
crying over her pig, Elsie Winters next door was crying over her blue
henrietta dress that didn't dye right. Elsie swears it was old dye
Martin sold her and wishes we'd have another drug store because a
little competition would do Martin good. And next door to Elsie, Pete
Sweeney's tickled to death. He says it serves Elsie right, that Green
Valley women've got a mania for dyeing things and trying to make 'em
last forever; that he's had two bolts of just the kind of color Elsie
was trying to get but that she wouldn't look at it.
"And Pete Sweeney's not the only one that's down on the women. Andy
Smiley cleaned up so much money on those new bungalows that he went to
the city and came home with twenty-five dollars' worth of ostrich
plumes for Nettie. He said he was bound that Nettie'd have a real hat
once in her life, that he's tired of watching her making her own hats,
even piecing out the shapes with bits of cardboard and trimming and
retrimming. She got in the way of it the first ten years they were
married, when Andy was having such poor luck and now, poor thing, I
guess she can't get out of it, because the day after Andy brought the
plumes Nettie went to the city and bought a thirty-nine-cent shape to
put them on. And she's wearing it like that, looking worse than ever.
They say Andy's swearing awful and that Mary Langely almost cried when
she saw those lovely plumes and begged Nettie to come in and let her
fix up her hat proper and without charge. But Nettie just smiled that
happy little smile of hers and shook her head.
"Andy Smiley ain't the only one that's doing well. Johnny Peters got a
raise the other day and Claudie's treated herself to two dozen
beautiful linen dish towels. She says she's used flour sacks to wipe
dishes ever since she was six years old and she's always been hoping
she'd be rich enough some day to have real linen dish towels. So she's
got 'em. But they're so nice she hardly likes to use them, and the two
weeks she was sick and had to have her washing done at the laundry she
was mighty careful not to send them. She washed them herself right
there beside her bed, and her sick with rheumatism. They say Doc
Philipps used awful language, for he caught her right at it. But when
she explained he just blew his nose and never said another word. But
he talked to Johnny and Johnny went out and bought four dozen dish
towels such as Green Valley has never seen. Why, Sadie Dundry says
even the Ainslees haven't got dish towels like that. Doc says that if
he can coax some man to get Dolly Beatty good woolen stockings and keep
her from wearing those transparent things this winter he'll be almost
happy; says if Dolly should marry that widower he'll talk to him.
"All Elm Street's laughing at Alexander Sabin and Carrie and their
pump. That pump of theirs has been out of order all summer and
Carrie's been sick from nothing else but getting mad every time she'd
go out for a pail of water. Alexander promised to fix it but instead
of that he's repaired everybody else's all up and down Elm Street and
just can't seem to get started on his own. Carrie's going on a strike
to-morrow, ain't going to cook a mouthful of victuals, she says, until
that pump is fixed. The neighbors, much as they like Alexander, are
all on her side and have promised not to invite him in, even for a
drink of water from the pumps he's fixed. And his mother's away at
Barton, nursing her sick sister, so it looks as if Alexander will be
starved into fixing that pump of his.
"Debby Collins is going to give the minister one of her cats, the one
that has to have a cold potato for its lunch every day. She says it's
the most mannerly of all her cats and that she'd never think of giving
it to any one but the minister and not even to him but that now that
he's going to have a proper home and a housekeeper, why, it'll be safe.
"Everybody, of course, is crazy about the housewarming the minister is
going to give next week. I guess everybody is going. It'll be a fine
night for thieves, Bessie Williams says, with every soul gone. That
girl's mind just naturally turns to evil. She knows there ain't ever
been a thing stolen in this town, less it was a kiss or two. But
Bessie's the only one, so far as I could hear, who was borrowing
trouble. The rest of the town is dying to get into that house that's
been closed so long. And everybody's curious to know just what Hen
Tomlins's been doing to the furniture. You know when the minister
found out what a fine wood-carver and cabinet-maker Hen was he had him
go through the house. And they say that Bernard Rollins, the
portraiture man, is mixed up in the housewarming too. But nobody can
figure out how. And that ain't the worst. Uncle Tony says that he
heard that the minister bought out the poolroom man, because some one
saw the music box being hauled over to the minister's house. You know
Jake and some others were planning to run that poolroom man out of
town, even whispering about tar and feathers. But the minister asked
them to let him manage and try to fix things up first. So they did and
he's done it, because the poolroom's closed; the stuff went out
yesterday and Effie Struby's brother Alf swears he saw that poolroom
man fooling with the minister's automobile out in the barn. But you
know how near-sighted Alf is and his word ain't credited much, and
everybody's so busy getting ready for the party that they can't stop to
investigate. And ain't it funny how none of us don't somehow ask the
minister things, just wait until he tells us? And ain't he got a funny
way of just talking about nothing special, only being pleasant, and
then letting you find out weeks after that he did tell you something
that you'd been needing to know? My! I bet that boy could give a
child castor oil and make him honestly think it was candy. Why, they
say that as far as anybody can find out, he's never give that poolroom
man even one good talking to. Jake, who's been itching to lambaste the
man, says 's-far's he can see, it was the poolroom man who did all the
talking. And once Jake says he just dropped in himself, just to see
what line of argument the minister was using, and he says that he'd be
danged if the minister did a blessed thing but play 'Annie Laurie' and
'We'd Better Bide a Wee' over and over on that music box. Jake hasn't
figured it out yet.
"Why, Grandma, there's some thinks maybe Cynthia's son has brought back
some Indian magic. They say India's chuckful of it--but law--it'll
take more than magic to save little Jim Tumley, for he's beginning
again. While the minister kept close he was all right but the
housewarming and that poolroom took up time, and then Jim's sister,
Mrs. Hoskins, got sick and Jim goes there to play and sing to her, and
you know what George Hoskins is. He must have his drink and offer
visitors some--and poor Jim--just the smell of it knocks him out. The
minister says Jim must be saved. But how's it to be done, tell me
that? There ain't anything smart or knowing about me, but the
minister'll never save Jim Tumley less'n he kills off a few of our
comfortable, respectable drinkers and closes up the hotel. And I tell
you, nobody but God Almighty could make this town dry."
"Well, Fanny," smiled Grandma, "I've noticed that if there ever is a
job that nobody but the Almighty can handle, He generally takes it in
hand and settles it."