It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house,
especially if he's at the _watchable_ age, although he's such a
darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before
you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and
run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great
pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great
handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch
for a minute by himself. And at times he won't be satisfied with
anything on earth unless you turn up the mattress and let him beat on
the bed-springs, which I consider a smart idea and think Cousin Eunice
ought to write out and send to a magazine under the head of "Hints
for Tired Mothers." But I say it again, there don't any of us begrudge
him these many little ways, although it's hard to be literary with
them; for when he smiles and "pat-a-cakes" and says "Ah! ah!" you
don't care if you never write another line.
Mother made Cousin Eunice turn over the raising of him to her the very
day she got here, for everybody knows, my diary, how a lady that's
ever raised a baby feels toward a lady that's just owned one a few
months.
"No _flannel_ on this precious child!" mother almost screamed the
minute we got him off the train and started to drive home. "Why, it's
positively flying in the face of Providence to leave his band off this
early!" And mother looked at Cousin Eunice like she had done it
a-purpose.
"Oh, Aunt Mary, please don't," poor Cousin Eunice said like she was
about to cry. "For the last eleven months there has been scarcely a
thing discussed in my presence but _belly-bands_!" (There weren't any
men around.) "It seems if a woman ever has one baby her thoughts never
travel away from flannel bands afterward!"
"But pneumonia! Cholera infantum! Teething!" Mother kept on, hugging
Waterloo close.
"That's what _twenty-three_ of my neighbors tell me," Cousin Eunice
answered, "then nineteen others say it's cruel to keep him all swathed
up in this hot weather, while eleven said to leave it off until his
second summer, and fifteen said for me to----"
"What does Doctor Gordon say?" mother asked, to change the subject off
of the neighbors.
"He said, '_Damn those old women!_'" Cousin Eunice told her, which
made her jump, although it looks like she has lived with father long
enough not to.
Right after dinner they started up the talk again. Should Waterloo be
banded or disbanded? They hadn't talked long when Mammy Lou came into
the room holding something under her apron. She looked kinder mad and
dignified at mother and Cousin Eunice because they hadn't asked her
for _her_ say-so about bands.
"If it's entirely respectable for me to speak before I'm spoke to,"
she commenced, her voice very proud and haughty, "I'd like for you all
to pay _me_ some mind. There's _two_ subject's I'm well qualified to
speak about and one is babies. Ain't I done raised a bushel basket
full o' little niggers, let alone that one beautiful little white
angel that's the peartest and sweetest of any in the state?"
Which made me feel very much embarrassed with modestness.
"We all know that you made a good job of Ann," Cousin Eunice said very
pleasantly just to pacify her. "What would you suggest about little
Rufus?"
"_These!_" Mammy Lou said, drawing her hand out from her apron like a
man on the stage dressed in velvet does his sword and we saw a string
of speckled beans.
"Job's Tears," mammy told the company. "Ther ain't no need to worry
about bands when you've got _these_! Ther nuvver has been a child that
cut teeth hard from Adam on down if his ma put a string of these
aroun' his neck----"
Cousin Eunice was beginning to say something nice when father spoke up
and asked mammy who it was that put them around Adam's neck, which
made her mad.
"Poke all the fun you want to," she said, "but the time _will_ come
that you-all 'ull be thankful to me for savin' these for Mr. Rufe's
baby, or I'm a blue-gum nigger!"
Lots of times I take Waterloo over to make Jean a visit, which is easy
on everybody, for the folks over there love babies so that they
relieve me of his weight the minute I get there and leave me and Jean
free to do whatever we want to. She is teaching me what she calls
"artistic handwriting" now, using an actress' signature for a copy. It
consists of some very large letters and some very small ones, like the
charts in an eye-doctor's office that he uses to see if you're old
enough to wear spectacles.
Cousin Eunice has time now with so many folks to help tend to Waterloo
to slip off every morning and go to a quiet place down in the yard
with her paper and pencil and compose on a book she's trying to write.
Before she was ever married she wanted to write a book, and if you
once get _that_ idea into your head even marrying won't knock it out.
Cousin Eunice says I'm such a kindred spirit that I don't bother her
when I go along too, but she has a dreadful time at her own house
trying to write. She don't more than get her soul full of beautiful
thoughts about tall, pale men and long-stemmed roses and other things
like that before a neighbor drops in and talks for three hours about
the lady around the corner's husband staying out so late at night and
what her servants use to scrub the kitchen sink. I told her I knew one
lady that hated so for folks to drop in that she unscrewed the front
doorbell, so she couldn't hear them ring, but she got paid back for it
next day by missing the visit of a rich relation.
Rufe and Cousin Eunice may live to be thankful for the string of Job's
Tears, but I reckon to-night Miss Merle and Mr. St. John wish that Job
never shed a tear in the shape of a bean, for they were what a grown
person would call "the indirect cause" of a quarrel between them. It's
queer that such a little thing as Waterloo should be picked out by
Fate to break up a loving couple, but he did; although I ain't saying
that it was _altogether_ his fault.
This afternoon I took him over to Jean's and we were having a lovely
time out on their front porch, enjoying stories of her former
sweethearts and a bottle of stuffed olives. She told me about one she
had last winter that she was deeply attached to. She would see him at
a big library in the city where she loves to read every afternoon. She
saw him there one time and got to admiring him so much that she would
go up there every afternoon at the time she knew he would be there and
get a book and sit opposite him, making like she was reading, but
really feasting her eyes on his lovely hair and scholarly looking
finger-nails.
"I never got acquainted with him, so never learned his name," she told
me, jabbing her hat-pin deep down into the olive bottle, like little
Jack Horner, "but he was always reading about 'The Origin of the Aryan
Family,' so I'm sure he was a young Mr. Aryan."
I told her I certainly had heard the Aryan family spoken of, I
couldn't remember where, but she said oh, yes, she knew it was a swell
family and that I must have read about it in the pink sheet of the
Sunday paper.
Then she said she had a souvenir of him, and, as I'm crazy about
souvenirs, I begged her to go and get it, hoping very much that it was
a miniature on ivory set in diamonds.
"What is it?" I kept asking her, as she was trying to get her legs
untangled out of her petticoats to get up and go after it; we were
sitting flat down on the floor, which sometimes tangles your heels
dreadfully. Finally she got up, tearing a piece of trimming out, which
she did up in a little ball and threw away, so her mother would lay it
on the washerwoman when she saw the tear.
"_Ashes_;" she told me, kinder whispery, after she had reached the
front door, for she was afraid somebody would hear; but it gave me a
terrible feeling and I wondered how she got them away from his
relations and whether she had to go to the graveyard in the middle of
the night to do it or not. I comforted myself with the thought that
they would be in a prettily ornamented urn, even if they were ashes,
for I had read about urns in Roman history; but shucks! when she got
back it wasn't a thing but a pink chewing-gum wrapper full of cigar
ashes that he had thrown away one day right in front of her as they
were going up the steps to the library.
Before I had time to tell her how disappointed I was there came a
picture-taking man up the front walk and asked us to let him take
Waterloo's picture for some post-cards. If you were pleased you could
buy them and if you weren't you didn't have to. But he knew of course
there wouldn't any lady be hardhearted enough not to buy a picture of
her own baby.
Nothing could have delighted us more, unless the man had said take
_our_ pictures; and Jean remarked that Waterloo ought to be fixed up
funny to correspond with the string of beads around his neck. She ran
and got a pair of overalls that belonged to the lady she boards with's
little boy and we stuffed Waterloo in. He looked too cute for anything
and we was just settling him down good for the picture when Jean
spoke up again and said oh, wasn't it a pity that he didn't have any
hair on his head, as hair showed up so well in a picture. I told her
it was aristocratic not to have hair when you're a baby, on your head.
She said shucks! how could anything connected with a baby be
aristocratic? This made me mad and I told her maybe she didn't know
what it was to be aristocratic. She said she did, too; it was
aristocratic to have a wide front porch to your house and to eat
sweetbreads when you were dining in a hotel. I was thinking up
something else to say when the picture-taking man said hurry up. There
is a great deal more to this, but it is so late that I'm going to
leave the rest for to-morrow night. Anyhow maybe my grandchildren will
be more interested to go on and read, for magazine writers always chop
their stories off at the most particular spot, when they are going to
be continued, just where you are holding your breath, so as to make
you buy the next number of the magazine.
Well, in just a minute after we were talking about the hair Jean said
she knew the _very_ thing! Her Aunt Merle was up on the far back porch
drying her hair that she had just finished washing, and had left her
rat lying on her bureau. She had seen it there when she went to get
the ashes of Mr. Aryan. She said it was a lovely rat, which cost five
dollars, all covered with long brown hair; and she said it was just
the thing to set off Waterloo's bald head fine. So she ran and got it
and we fixed it on. He looked exactly like a South Sea Islander which
you see in the side show of an exposition by paying twenty-five cents
extra. (An exposition is a large place which makes your feet nearly
kill you.) But the picture-man said he looked mighty cute and snapped
him in several splendid positions.
Now, if Mr. St. John had just stayed where he belonged this would be
the end of the story and I could go on to bed to-night, without having
to sit up by myself writing till the clocks strike eleven, which is a
lonesome hour when everybody else is in bed.
But Mr. St. John didn't stay away; and, as all the bad things that
happen are laid on Fate, I reckon she was the one that put it into his
head to walk up those front steps and on to that porch before we
noticed him, for we were trying our best to get Waterloo back into
citizen's clothes.
He stopped to see what it was we were scrambling over, and when he saw
that it was alive he threw up his nice white hands and remarked
"Heavens!" which is the elegant thing to say when you're surprised,
although father always says, "Jumping Jerusalem!"
"What is the thing?" he asked, after he had looked again. Jean told
him why it was just the lady over at our house's little baby dressed
up. Then he asked what that horrible woolly growth on his head was,
which tickled Jean mightily. Then, just for the fun of seeing what he
_would_ say when he was very much surprised, she jerked it off and
held it up, like the executioner did Mary, Queen of Scot's head, which
gives me a crinkly pain up and down my back even to read about. The
rat was just pinned together and set up on Waterloo's little noggin,
so Jean jerked it off and explained to Mr. St. John that it was her
Aunt Merle's rat. _I_ always knew it wasn't any good idea to talk
about such things before a man that was a person's lover; but I
thought Jean had had more experience in such things than I had and it
wasn't my place to interrupt her.
I am sure Mr. St. John felt like saying "Jumping Jerusalem" when Jean
told him that the woolly growth was the rat of his beloved. If I was
writing a novel I'd say that he "recoiled with horror," that is, he
jumped back quickly, like he didn't want it to bite him, and sat
down.
"_Imagine!_" he kept saying to himself like he was dazed; "imagine a
man _touching_ the thing! _Kissing_ the thing!"
I thought, of course, he was talking about Waterloo, and was ready to
speak up and say, "I thank you, Mr. St. John, my little cousin is not
to be called a '_thing_,'" but Jean spoke first.
"What would you want to kiss _this_ for?" she asked him. "'Tain't any
harm to kiss in the _mouth_ after you're engaged, is it?"
We might have been standing there asking him such questions as that
till daylight this morning for all the answers we got out of him, but
while he sat looking at us and we were trying to squirm Waterloo's
little fat legs out of the overalls and him kicking and crying, Miss
Merle walked out on the porch. She saw Mr. St. John first, as you
would naturally expect an engaged girl to do, and started toward him,
but just then she saw us and stopped.
"Why, what on earth are you children doing with my rat down here?"
she asked, not looking a bit ashamed.
We told her what we had been doing with it and she just laughed and
said well, it was too hot to wear the thing on such a day anyway,
although she had looked for it high and low.
All the time we were talking Mr. St. John looked at her in the most
amazed way, like he expected to see her appear looking like a Mexican
dog, but was greatly surprised to see her with such a nice lot of
home-made hair. If he had had any sense he would admire her all the
more for not telling a story about that rat; for I've seen a thousand
young ladies in my life that wouldn't have owned up to it for a
hundred dollars, but would have made their little niece out a story
and then boxed her ears in private. I hope when I get grown I won't be
a _liarable_ young lady, although it does seem like they're twice as
quick to get married as an honest one.
He didn't act with good sense, though, for they soon got to talking
and we could hear what they said (although we were out of sight) for
they were high-toned remarks.
He said he _hated_ shams, and she said well, that wasn't any sham for
every blowsy-headed girl wears them nowadays and everybody knows it,
even the poets and novel-writers that always make their heroines so
fuzzy-headed. Then she called him a prig and he said something back at
her and she gave him back the ring, which was a brave thing to do, it
being a grand diamond one with Mizpath marked in it.
Of course the next thing that happens after an engagement is broken is
for it to get mended again. All day we have hung around Miss Merle to
see just when she gets the ring back again, but up to a late hour
to-night, as the newspapers say about the election returns, there was
nothing doing. Oh, it does seem a pity that they would let the news go
down to their children or be put on their tombstones that their lives
were blighted on account of a rat!
I've neglected you, my diary, for the last few days because my mind
has been on other things. It rained all the next day after I wrote
last and I couldn't go over to Jean's, which put me out greatly. I
finally thought about sending a note by Lares and Penates and paid
them in chicken livers, me being so uneasy in my mind that I didn't
have any appetite for them, and knowing that they loved them enough to
fight over them any time.
I told Jean in the note to fix some kind of signal like Paul Revere to
let me know the minute the ring got back to Miss Merle, for I was
deeply worried, me and Waterloo and Jean being to blame for it. Then,
too, it is dangerous for an engagement ring to stay returned too long
for it might get given to another girl.
Jean was delighted with my note and said she would certainly hang a
lantern in the garret only she never could undo the chimney of a
lantern to light it, and never saw a lady person that could; but it
was a romantic idea. So she thought hanging a white towel in the
window that faces our house for a signal would do very well, and I
could know by that if it kept on raining and I couldn't get over
there.
Well, I was so interested that I hardly moved from that side of the
house all day, until it got so dark that I couldn't see the house,
much less a towel. So I went sorrowfully to bed. The next morning I
was delighted to see that I was going to get rewarded for my watching,
for _long_ before breakfast I discovered a white thing, and it was
waving from Mr. St. John's window, which made it all the surer in my
mind.
Although it was cakes and maple syrup I didn't waste much time over
breakfast, but grabbed my hat and started for Jean's.
Miss Merle was on the front porch and I noticed Mr. St. John just
inside the hall, looking like he would like to come out, but was
waiting for her to give him lief. She looked up at me quick.
"Why, Ann," she said, "what are you in such a big hurry about?"
I've often noticed, my diary, that when people are in a hurry and
can't think of anything else to tell they tell the _truth_, although
they don't intend to. It was that way with me.
"Oh, I'm _so_ glad you and Mr. St. John have made up!" I told her,
fanning hard with my hat, for I was all out of breath.
She looked very strange and asked me, "What?" and so I told her over
again. Just then Mr. St. John came out and asked who was that talking
about him behind his back. He looked pitiful, although he tried to
look pleasant, too.
Jean heard me talking and came running down the stairs just in time to
hear me telling it over again to Miss Merle.
"Why, there ain't a _sign_ of a towel hanging out the window," she
told me, looking very much surprised and me greatly mortified. "You
must have dreamed it!"
Miss Merle asked her then what she was talking about and it was their
turn to look surprised when she told them.
I told them I had felt awfully bad about the rat, because me and
Waterloo was partly responsible, and they kinder smiled. But I
couldn't let them think that I had _made_ up the towel story, so I
told them if they would come around on the side that faces our house
I'd show them. Mr. St. John and Miss Merle looked at each other very
peculiar and he said:
"It's a shame to disappoint the children!" which she didn't make any
answer to, but she looked _tolerable_ agreeable. Then I begged them to
come on around to Mr. St. John's window and I could show them I wasn't
any story.
"My window!" he said, looking surprised; then his face turned red.
"Why, it must have been my er--_shirt_ I hung there last night to dry
after I was out in that shower!"
We couldn't help from laughing, all of us; but he laughs like the
corners of his mouth ain't used to it. That is one bad thing about a
dignified man--they're always afraid to let their mouth muscles
stretch.
Miss Merle caught me and Jean by the hand with a smile and said let's
go and see what that signal looked like that brought Ann over in such
a hurry. "A shirt is a highly proper thing to discuss--since Thomas
Hood," she said as we started down the steps.
"Pray don't," he said, the corners of his mouth wrinkling again, but
his face just covered with red. "I'll be the happiest man on earth,
Merle, if you'll just forgive me for my asininity; but--_do_ come
back!---- For it's an _undershirt_!"