The Four Corners

Mary Lee's footsteps were hastily approaching. She burst into the room with, "Mother, is it true that you are going away?"

"Yes, dear child."

"What for? Nan was so mean and wouldn't tell me."

"I didn't give Nan permission to tell you why I was going."

"She needn't have been so disagreeable about it though," said Mary Lee. "Why didn't she say that you told her not to tell?"

"You didn't give me a chance," put in Nan. "You called me a scurvy old pullet before I could explain."

"What a name, Mary Lee," said Mrs. Corner reprovingly. "Where did you hear it?"

"Phil says it."

"Don't say it again. If you lose your temper like that and cannot bridle your tongue, I am afraid your mother will have many sorry moments while she is away trying to regain her health."

In an instant Mary Lee was on her knees by her mother's side. "Are you ill, mother?" she asked anxiously.

"Not very, but I may be if I do not have a change of climate, so I am going to take a trip. I have hardly left this place for eight years and more. I shall come back trig as a trivet, Mary Lee, so don't be troubled about me."

Nan left her mother to explain matters further and sought the twins who were amicably swinging under a big tree. As she unfolded her news to them the point which at first seemed to be most important was the coming of the two boys. Jack objected to their arrival, Jean welcomed it, and straightway they began a discussion in the midst of which Nan left them. Her brain was buzzing with the many thoughts which her interview with her mother suggested. She determined to be zealous in good works, and immediately hunted up Mitty that she might see that all was going well in the kitchen.

Mitty had not much respect for one younger than herself and paid no attention when Nan entered, but kept on singing in a high shrill key:

"Whe-e-en Eve eat de apple,
Whe-e-e-en Eve eat de apple,
Whe-en Eve eat de apple,
Lord, what a try-y-in' time."

"Mitty, have you everything out for supper?" asked Nan with her mother's manner.

Mitty rolled her eyes in Nan's direction, but vouchsafed no reply, continuing to sing in a little higher key:

"When she-e gabe de co' to Adam,
Whe-en she gabe de co' to Adam,
Whe-e-en she gabe de co' to Adam,
Lord, what a try-y-yin' time."

"I want to know," repeated Nan severely, "if you have everything out for supper?"

"I has what I has," returned Mitty, breaking some splinters of wood across her knee.

"I wish you'd answer me properly," said Nan, impatiently.

"Yuh ain' de lady ob de house," returned Mitty, provokingly. "Yuh ain' but jest a little peepin' chick. Yuh ain' even fryin' size yet."

"I think when mother sends me with a message, it is your place to answer me," said Nan with her head in the air. "I will see if Unc' Landy can get you to tell me what mother wants to know." And she stalked out.

As Unc' Landy was Mitty's grandfather, and the only being of whom she stood in awe, this had its effect. "I tell yuh, Miss Nan, 'deed an' 'deed I will," cried Mitty, running after her and hastily enumerating the necessary articles to be given out from the pantry. "'Tain' no buttah, 'tain' no sugah, jest a little bit o' co'n meal. Oh, Miss Nan!"

But Nan had passed beyond hearing and was resolutely turning her steps toward Unc' Landy's quarters, a comfortable brick cabin which stood about fifty yards from the house. The old man was sitting before its door industriously mending a hoe-handle. It was not often that Nan complained of Mitty, for she, too, well knew the effect of such a course. Upon this occasion, however, she felt that her future authority depended upon establishing present relations and that it would never do to let Mitty know she had worsted the eldest daughter of the house. "Unc' Landy, I wish you'd speak to Mitty," said Nan. "She wouldn't tell me what to give out for supper and mother gave me the keys to attend to it for her; she's busy sewing."

Unc' Landy seized the hoe-handle upon which he was at work, and made an energetic progress toward the kitchen, catching the unlucky Mitty as she was about to flee. Brandishing his hoe-handle, he threateningly cried: "Wha' yo' mannahs? I teach yuh show yo' sassy ways to one of de fambly!"

Up went Mitty's arm to defend herself from the impending blow while she whimpered forth: "I done say 'tain' no buttah; 'tain' no sugah; the's a little bit o' meal; an' Miss Nan ain' hyah me."

"Ef I bus' yo' haid open den mebbe she kin hyah yuh nex' time," said Unc' Landy catching the girl's shoulder and beginning to bang her head against the door.

But here Nan, feeling that Mitty was scared into good behavior interfered. "That will do, Unc' Landy. If she told me, it is all right."

"She gwine speak loudah an' quickah nex' time," said Unc' Landy, shaking his hoe-handle at Mitty. "Yuh tell Miss Nan what she ast yuh, er I'll fetch Mr. Hoe ober hyah agin an' try both ends, so yuh see which yuh lak bes'." And he went off muttering about "dese yer no 'count young niggahs what so busy tryin' to be sma't dey ain' no time to larn sense."

The thoroughly humbled Mitty meekly answered all Nan's questions and Nan felt that she was fortified with authority for some time to come.

Nan was always shocked and repelled by Unc' Landy's methods, and only in extreme cases was she willing to appeal to him. Such appeals, sometimes bringing swifter and more extreme punishment, so affected Nan as to make her avoid Unc' Landy for days. He was always so very tender and courteous to every member of the "fambly" that it seemed almost incredible that he should be so merciless to one of his own flesh and blood, but such was a common attitude of the older negroes toward the younger ones, and his was not an unusual case. When Mrs. Corner was on hand she never permitted the old man to exercise his rights toward Mitty, but once or twice when the girl had overstepped bounds in his presence, he had meted out punishment to her later on, so she feared him while she respected him, praising him lavishly to her boon companions.

"Gran'daddy got a pow'ful long ahm," she would say, "an' man, I say he swif' an' strong, mos' lak angel Gabr'el wid he swo'd an' trumpet. I mos' as feared o' gran'daddy as I is o' angel Gabr'el. Ef gran'daddy call me an' angel Gabr'el blow he trumpet at de same time I don' know which I bleedged to min'. I specs I run a bilin' to gran'daddy fust."

Having established her position in the kitchen, Nan returned to her mother. Every moment seemed precious now, and that night after Mary Lee was asleep, Nan crept softly from her bed and laid herself down by her mother whose arms clasped her close, but who did not allow her to remain. "It is not well for you to sleep with me, dear," she said. "It will be better for us both if you go back to your own room." Nan obeyed, but it was an anxious hour that she spent before sleep visited her. The night hours brought her many forebodings, and she felt that her young spirit was stretching beyond the limits of childhood toward that larger and less happy region of womanhood.

CHAPTER V

HOUSEWIFELY CARES

The day for Mrs. Corner's departure came around all too soon. Aunt Sarah was to have arrived the evening before, but up to the last moment she had not come, and Mrs. Corner felt that she could not wait since all her arrangements were made. "I am positive she will be here to-day," she told Nan, "probably by the noon train, and the boys will not come till to-morrow, so you will have no trouble, even if Aunt Sarah should not come till night."

There were many tears and embraces at the last moment. Even Jean's placidity was disturbed and when the train which held her mother, moved out of sight, she flung herself in Nan's arms sobbing, "Oh, I didn't want her to go, I didn't."

Jack rubbed her eyes with none too clean fists and reiterated: "I promised I'd be good; I promised I'd be good." As for Mary Lee she slipped an arm around her elder sister, but "Oh, Nan! Oh, Nan!" was all she could say. Nan herself bravely kept back the tears but her feeling of helplessness and desolation was almost more than she could bear. Mother, who had never left them for so much as a night, gone far away where they could not and should not reach her. No one to advise, to comfort, to sympathize. No one to confide in. It was all blackness and darkness without that blessed mother.

Four very sober children returned to the house to eat their dinner alone. Even the importance of sitting at the head of the table brought no joy to Nan, and the fact that Phil's mother had sent them over a dish of frozen custard brought none of them any great enjoyment.

Mitty had taken advantage of the occasion to announce that she was going to a "fessible." She informed Nan that she had asked Mrs. Corner's consent weeks before and had been told that when the Sons and Daughters of Moses and Aaron had their "fessible" she could go. There was really nothing to say, and Mitty, adorned in a rattling, stiffly starched petticoat over which as stiffly a starched pink lawn stood out magnificently, started forth, bearing her purple parasol and wearing her brilliant yellow hat trimmed with blue roses.

"She certainly is a sight," remarked Mary Lee, watching Mitty's exit. "Wouldn't her feathers drop if she should get wet? Oh, Nan, I do believe a thunder-storm is coming up. Look at that black cloud."

"Now don't begin to be scary," said Nan, coming to the window. If there was one thing above another of which Mary Lee was scared it was a thunder-storm; it completely demoralized her, and she would always retire to the darkest corner, crouching there in dread of each flash of lightning and clap of thunder. Nan scanned the sky and then said calmly, "Well, I think it is very likely we will have a shower; we generally do when the Sons and Daughters have their festival."

It had been a sultry day, and the low-hanging clouds began to increase in mass, showing jagged edges, and following one another up the sky, black, threatening, rolling forms. In the course of half an hour, the first peal of distant thunder came to their ears and Mary Lee began to tremble. "It seems a thousand times worse when mother isn't here," she complained. "It seems dreadful for us four children to be here all alone. Suppose the lightning should strike the house."

"Then mother would be safe," said Nan, exultantly.

"But it wouldn't do her any good if we should all be killed," Mary Lee returned lugubriously.

"Suppose it should strike the train mother is in?" said Jean in a frightened tone.

"Oh, it couldn't," Nan reassured her. "It goes so fast that it would get beyond the storm. The sun is probably shining bright where mother is by this time."