Mildred Keith

"Well, I'm spunky, mother; that's a fact; and I ain't a bit ashamed of it nuther."

"Don't you go if you can't behave yourself," said Gotobed, leaving the table and the room.

Mrs. Keith had gathered her children about her in the parlor, it being the shadiest and coolest apartment in the house in the afternoon. She, herself, Aunt Wealthy and the little girls were sewing, while Rupert kept the little boys quiet and interested with the making of a kite, and Mildred read aloud from Mrs. Sherwood's "Roxobelle."

Mildred had a clear, sweet-toned voice, enunciated distinctly, and read with feeling and expression; so that it was a pleasure to listen to her.

Rupert, Zillah and Ada were also good readers, and would take their turns as such; for this was no new thing, but one of the mother's ways of educating her children and training them to a love of literature.

While many another thing had been left behind in Ohio, they had brought all their books with them. Poetry, histories, biographies, books of travel, religious and scientific works, juvenile story-books and a few novels, all of the best class, were to be found among their treasured stores, reveled in by old and young.

Mr. Keith had his volumes of legal lore too, but with these the other members of the family seldom if ever cared to interfere.

Mrs. Sherwood was a favorite author with the young people; they were reading "Roxobelle" for the first time and had reached a most exciting part – the scene where the little dog had led Sophie Beauchamp into the room where his invalid and much abused mistress lay, chained by disease to her wretched bed, when Mrs. Lightcap and Rhoda Jane appeared in the open doorway.

They were dressed with the utmost simplicity – gowns, aprons and sunbonnets of calico, made without regard to fashion; no collars or cuffs; hands bare and brown; faces sunburnt, the mother's stolid, the girl's sufficiently sharp but lacking education and refinement.

It was far from being a welcome interruption. Mildred closed her book with a half suppressed sigh, the little girls exchanged glances of vexation and disappointment; Rupert, too scowled and uttered an exclamation of impatience half under his breath; but Mrs. Keith and Miss Stanhope rose smilingly, gave the visitors a cordial greeting, asked them to be seated and entered into conversation.

"It's powerful warm," remarked Mrs. Lightcap, accepting the offered chair and wiping the perspiration from her heated face with the corner of her apron.

"Yes, it has been an unusually warm day," responded Miss Stanhope, handing a fan; while Mrs. Keith asked if they would not take off their bonnets.

"Well ma'am, I don't care if I do," returned Mrs. Lightcap, pulling hers off and laying it on her lap; Rhoda Jane doing likewise.

"Let me lay them on the table," Mildred said, recovering her politeness.

"No, thank you; 'tain't worth while fur the few minutes we're agoin' to set; they's no ways hefty.

"Our names is Lightcap; this here's my daughter Rhoda Jane and she says to me, 'mother,' says she, 'we'd ought to be sociable with them new neighbors of ourn; let's go over and set a bit.' No, now what am I talkin' about?' 'twan't her nuther, 'twas Gote that spoke of it first, but my gal here was more'n willing to come."

"Yes, we always try to be neighborly," assented the girl. "How do you like Pleasant Plains, ladies?"

"It seems a pleasant town and we find very pleasant people in it," was Mrs. Keith's smiling rejoinder.

"That's the talk!" exclaimed Miss Lightcap laughing. "You'll do, Mis' Keith."

"Comin' so late you won't be able to raise no garden sass this year," remarked the mother; then went on to give a detailed account of what they had planted, what was growing well, and what was not, with an occasional digression to her husband, her cooking and housework, the occasional attacks of "agur" that interfered with her plans; and so on and so on – her daughter managing to slip in a word or two now and then.

At length they rose to go.

"How's Viny?" queried Rhoda Jane, addressing Mildred.

"Quite well, I believe," replied Mildred in a freezing tone, and drawing herself up with dignity.

"Tell her we come to see her too," laughed the girl, as she stepped from the door, "Good-bye. Hope you won't be ceremonious, but run in sociable any time o' day."

Chapter Eleventh

"Zeal and duty are not slow:
But on occasion's forelock watchful wait."

    – Milton.
"The impudent thing!" exclaimed Mildred to her mother with a flushed and angry face; "putting us and our maid of all work on the same level! Visit her? Not I, indeed, and I do hope, mother, that neither you nor Aunt Wealthy will ever cross their threshold."

"My dear, she probably did not mean it," said Mrs. Keith.

"And now let us go on with our story. You have all waited quietly and politely like good children."

"Gotobed Lightcap! Lightcap! Gotobed Nightcap!" sang Cyril, tumbling about on the carpet. "O Don, don't you wish you had such a pretty name?"

"No, I wouldna; I just be Don."

"There, dears, don't talk now; sister's going to read," said their mother. "If you don't want to be still and listen you may run out and play in the yard."

"Somebody else tumin'," whispered Fan, pulling at her mother's skirts.

Mildred closed again the book she had just resumed, rose and inviting the new comer to enter, handed her a chair.

She was a tall, gaunt, sallow-complexioned woman of uncertain age, with yellow hair, pale watery blue eyes, and a sanctimonious expression of countenance.

Her dress was almost austere in its simplicity; a dove-colored calico, cotton gloves of a little darker shade, a white muslin handkerchief crossed on her bosom, a close straw bonnet with no trimming but a skirt of plain, white ribbon and a piece of the same put straight across the top, brought down over the ears and tied under the chin.

"My name is Drybread," she announced with a slight, stiff courtesy; then seating herself bolt upright on Mildred's offered chair, waited to be addressed.

"Mrs. or Miss?" queried Mrs. Keith pleasantly.

"Miss. And yours?"

"Mrs. Keith. Allow me to introduce my aunt, Miss Stanhope, and my daughter Mildred. These little people too belong to me."

"Gueth we do so?" said Don, showing a double row of pearly teeth, "cauth you're our own mamma. Ain't she, Cyril?"

"Do you go to school, my little man?" asked the visitor, unbending slightly in the stiffness of her manner.

"Ain't your man! don't like dwy bwead, 'cept when I'se vewy hungwy."

"Neither do I," chimed in Cyril. "And we don't go to school. Papa says we're not big enough."

"Don! Cyril! my little boys must not be rude," reproved the mamma. "Run away now to your plays."

"They're pretty children," remarked the caller as the twain disappeared.

"Very frank in the expression of their sentiments and wishes," the mother responded smiling.

"Extremely so, I should say;" added Mildred dryly.

"Is it not a mother's duty to curb and restrain?" queried the visitor, fixing her cold blue eyes upon Mrs. Keith's face.