"IT JEST RATTLES"
Almira Day was a good-hearted woman. It was not in her to treat her
husband's niece otherwise than kindly, despite her threat to the
contrary when Jason left the old Day house to meet Janice at the
steamboat dock.
She stood smiling in the doorway--a large, pink, lymphatic woman, as
shapeless as a half-filled meal-sack with a string tied around its
middle, quite as untidy as her husband in dress, but with clean skin and
a wholesome look.
Her calico dress was faded and, in places, strained to the
bursting-point, showing that it was "store-bought" and had never been
fitted to Mrs. Day's bulbous figure. She wore a pair of men's slippers
very much down at the heel, and pink stockings with a gaping hole in the
seam at the back of one, which Janice very plainly saw as her aunt
preceded her upstairs to the room the visitor was to occupy.
"I hope ye won't mind how things look," drawled Aunt 'Mira. "We ain't
as up-an'-comin' as some, I do suppose. But nothin' ain't gone well with
Jason late years, an' he's got some mis'ry that he can't git rid of,
so's he can't work stiddy. Look out for this nex' ter the top step. The
tread's broke an' I been expectin' ter be throwed from top to bottom of
these stairs for weeks."
"Can't Uncle Jason fix it?" asked Janice, stepping over the broken
tread.
"Wal, he ain't exactly got 'round to it yet," confessed her aunt.
"There! I do hope you like your room, Niece Janice. There's a pretty
outlook from the winder."
True enough, the window overlooked the hillside and the lake. Only, had
the panes been washed one could have viewed the landscape and the water
so much better!
The room itself was the shabbiest bedchamber Janice Day had ever seen.
The carpet on the floor had, generations before, been one of those
flowery axminsters that country people used to buy for their "poller."
Then they would pull all the shades down and shut the room tightly, for
otherwise the pink roses faded completely out of the design.
This old carpet had long since been through _that_ stage of existence,
however, and was now worn to the warp in spots, its design being visible
only because of the ingrained grime which years of trampling had brought
to it.
The paper on the walls was faded and stained. Empty places where
pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren
districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented
the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two
famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted
motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above the little bureau glass.
There was, too, a torn and faded slipper for matches, and a tall glass
lamp that, for some reason, reminded Janice of a skeleton. She could
never look at that lamp thereafter without expecting the oil tank to
become a grinning skull with a tall fool's cap (the chimney) on it, and
its thin body to sprout bony arms and legs.
The furniture was decrepit and ill matched. Janice could have overlooked
the shaky chair, the toppling bureau, and the scratched washstand; but
the bed with only three legs, and a soap-box under the fourth corner,
_did_ bring a question to the guest's lips:
"Where is the other leg, Aunty?"
"Now, I declare for't!" exclaimed Mrs. Day. "That _is_ too bad! The
leg's up on the closet shelf here. Jase was calkerlatin' to put it on
again, but he ain't never got 'round to it. But the box'll hold yer. It
only rattles," she added, as Janice tried the security of the bedstead.
That expression, "it only rattles," the girl from Greensboro was
destined to hear unnumbered times in her uncle's home. It was typical of
the old Day house and its inmates. Unless a repair absolutely _must_ be
made, Uncle Jason would not take a tool in his hand.
As for her Cousin Martin ("Marty" everybody called the gangling,
grinning, idle ne'er-do-well of fourteen), Janice was inclined to be
utterly hopeless about him from the start. If he was a specimen of the
Poketown boys, she told herself, she had no desire to meet any of them.
"What do you do with yourself all day long, Marty, if you don't go to
school?" she asked her cousin, at the dinner table.
"Oh, I hang around--like everybody else. Ain't nothin' doin' in
Poketown."
"I should think it would be more fun to go to school."
"Not ter 'Rill Scattergood," rejoined the boy, in haste. "That old maid
dunno enough to teach a cow."
Janice might have thought a cow much more difficult to teach than a boy;
only she looked again into Marty's face, which plainly advertised the
vacancy of his mind, and thought better of the speech that had risen to
her lips.
"Marty won't go to school no more," her aunt complained, whiningly.
"'Rill Scattergood ain't got no way with him. Th' committee's been
talkin' about gittin' another teacher for years; but 'Rill's sorter
_sot_ there, she's had the place so long."
"There's more than a month of school yet--before the summer
vacation--isn't there?" queried Janice.
"Oh, yes," sighed Mrs. Day.
"I'd love to go and get acquainted with the girls," the guest said,
brightly. "Wouldn't you go with me some afternoon and introduce me to
the teacher, Marty?"
"_Me?_ Ter 'Rill Scattergood? Naw!" declared the amazed Marty. "I sh'd
say not!"
"Why, Marty!" exclaimed his mother. "That ain't perlite."
"Who said 'twas?" returned her hopeful son, shortly. "I ain't tryin' ter
be perlite ter no _girl_. And I ain't goin' ter 'Rill Scattergood's
school--never, no more!"
"Young man," commanded his father, angrily, "you hold that tongue o'
yourn. And you be perlite to your cousin, or I'll dance the dust out o'
your jacket with a hick'ry sprout, big as ye be."
Janice hastened to change the subject and tune the conversation to a
more pleasant key.
"It is so pretty all over this hillside," she said. "Around Greensboro
the country is flat. I think the hills are much more beautiful. And the
lake is just _dear_."
"Ya-as," sighed her aunt. "Artis' folks come here an' paint this lake. I
reckon it's purty; but ye sort er git used ter it after a while."
It was evidently hard for Aunt 'Mira to enthuse over anything. Marty
volunteered:
"We got a waterfall on our place. Folks call it the Shower Bath. Guess a
girl would think 'twas pretty."
"Oh! I'd love to see that," declared Janice, quickly.
"I'll show it to you after dinner," said Marty, of a sudden surprisingly
friendly.
"You'll hoe them 'taters after dinner," cried his father, sharply.
"That's what _you'll_ do."
"Huh!" growled the sullen youth. "Yer said I was to be perlite, an' when
I start in ter be, you spring them old pertaters on a feller. Huh!"
"Aw, now, Jason," interposed his mother. "Can't Marty show his cousin
over the farm and hoe the 'taters afterward?"
"No, he can't!" denied Master Marty, quickly. "I ain't goin' ter work
double for nobody. Now, that's flat!"
"Oh, we can go to the Shower Bath some other time," suggested Janice,
apprehensive of starting another family squabble. "I don't know as I'd
be able to hoe potatoes; but maybe there are other things I can do in
the garden. I always had a big flower garden at home."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Flowers are only a nuisance."
"I s'pose you could weed some," sighed Aunt 'Mira. "It hurts me so to
stoop."
"She'd better pick 'tater bugs," said Marty, grinning. "They've begun to
come, I reckon. Hard-shells, anyway."
Janice could not resist shivering at this suggestion. She did not love
insects any better than do most girls. But she took Marty's suggestion
in good part.
"You wait," she said. "Maybe I can do that, too. I'll weed a little,
anyway. Have you a large farm, Uncle Jason?"
"It's big enough, Janice," grumbled Jason. "Does seem as though--most
years--it's too big for us to manage. If Marty, here, warn't so
triflin'----"
"I don't see no medals on _you_ for workin' hard," whispered the boy,
loud enough for Janice to hear.
"This was a right good farm, onc't," said Aunt 'Mira. "B'fore Jason got
his mis'ry we use ter have good crops. That's when we was fust married."
"But that's what broke my health all down," interposed Uncle Jason.
"Don't pay a man to work so hard when he's young. He has ter suffer for
it in the end."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "If it wasn't good for _you_ to work so hard when
you was young, what about _me_?"
"You git along out o' here an' start on them 'taters!" commanded Mr.
Day, angrily.
Marty slid out, muttering under his breath. Janice jumped up from the
table, saying cheerfully: "I'll help you with the dishes, Aunty. Let's
clear off."
Her uncle had risen and was feeling for his corncob pipe on the ledge
above the door. Mrs. Day looked a bit startled when she saw Janice begin
briskly to collect the soiled dishes.
"I dunno, Janice," she hesitated. "I gin'rally feel right po'ly after
dinner, and I'm use ter takin' forty winks."
Janice did not wonder that her aunt felt "right po'ly." She had eaten
more pork, potatoes, spring cabbage and fresh bread than would have
served a hearty man.
"Let's get rid of the dishes first, Aunty," said Janice, cheerfully "You
can get your nap afterward."
"Wa-al," agreed Mrs. Day, slowly rising. "I dunno's there's water enough
to more'n give 'em a lick and a promise. Marty! Oh, you Marty! Come, go
for a pail of water, will ye? That's a good boy."
"Now, ye know well enough," snarled Jason's voice just outside the
door, "that that boy ain't in earshot now."
"Oh, _I_ can get a pail of water from the pump, Aunty," said Janice,
briskly starting for the porch.
"But that pump ain't goin'," declared Mrs. Day. "An' no knowin' when
'twill be goin'. We have ter lug all our water from Dickerson's."
"Oh, gimme the bucket!" snapped Uncle Jason, putting his great, hairy
hand inside the door and snatching the water-pail from the shelf.
"Wimmen-folks is allus a-clatterin' about suthin'!"
Janice had never imagined people just like these relatives of hers. She
was both ashamed and amused,--ashamed of their ill-breeding and amused
by their useless bickering.
"Wa-al," said her aunt, yawning and lowering herself upon the kitchen
couch, the springs of which squeaked complainingly under her weight,
"Wa-al, 'tain't scurcely wuth doin' the dishes _now_. Jason'll stop and
gab 'ith some one. It takes him ferever an' a day ter git a pail o'
water. You go on about your play, Niece Janice. I'll git 'em done erlone
somehow, by-me-by."
Mrs. Day closed her eyes while she was still speaking. She was evidently
glad to relax into her old custom again.
Janice took down her aunt's sunbonnet from the nail by the side door and
went out. Amusement had given place in the girl's mind to something
like actual shrinking from these relatives and their ways. The porch
boards gave under even her weight. Some of them were broken. The steps
were decrepit, too. The pump handle was tied down, she found, when she
put a tentative hand upon it.
"'It jest rattles,'" quoted Janice; but no laugh followed the sigh which
was likewise her involuntary comment upon the situation.