Back at School with the Tucker Twins

"Why, Mr. Kent, I saw Jo yesterday and he did not tell me you were coming!" I exclaimed as he dropped some of his packages so he could shake my hand.

"I did not let him know. I find when Cousin Sally expects me she makes herself sick cooking for me, so I thought I would surprise them."

I certainly liked his spirit of unselfishness. Not many young men would have thought of sparing a middle-aged, complaining cousin whose one attraction was her cooking. Just then Jo Winn came gliding up in his little cutter, ostensibly for the mail but in reality to catch a glimpse of Dee who was the one female I have ever seen the shy man at his ease with. Of course he was at his ease with me, having known me since I was a baby, but I somehow never think of myself as a female to make the males tremble.

Our hilarious greetings were under way and the train had begun to move when an agonizing screech came from the coloured coach, the one nearest the engine. There was a great ringing of the bell and then there emerged the portly form of "poor dear Blanche," as Zebedee always called the girl who had cooked for us at Willoughby the summer before, – not to her face, of course.

Her great black-plumed hat was all awry, and from the huge basket, that she always carried in lieu of a valise, there dragged long green stockings and some much belaced lingerie. She was greatly excited, having come within an ace of passing the station.

"I was in the embrace of Morphine, as it were, Miss Page, and had no recognizance of having derived at our predestination, whin I was sudden like brought to my sensibleness by hearing the dulsom tones of Miss Dum a greeting you. I jumped up and called loud and long for the inductor to come to my resistance. The train had begun to prognosticate! I was in respiration whin a dark complected gentleman in the seat opposing mine, very kindly impeded the bell by reducing the rope."

"What did the conductor say?" I knew that it was a terrible offense for a non-official to pull the bell rope.

"Say! Why, Miss Page, 'twould bring the blush of remortifycation to my maiden meditations to repetition that white man's langige."

It was cheering indeed to hear Blanche's inimitable conversation once more. Thank goodness, there were enough other things to laugh at for her not to know we were overcome by her remarks. We bundled her into the far back corner of the sled, where she sat like a Zulu queen on a throne. Good-byes were called to Jo Winn and his cousin, who said they would come over to Bracken after supper to help decorate the house. I had promised Tweedles not to decorate until they came, but I had had some great boughs of holly cut ready for the rite. I had gathered quantities of running cedar myself and, at the risk of my foolish neck, had climbed up a great walnut tree and sawed off a stumpy branch literally loaded with mistletoe.

"I bid to drive," cried Zebedee as soon as the crowd was packed in the sled. "Do you stand up to it?"

"Yes, you always stand in a wood sled." I should have said: "Be careful!" as the art of driving standing is not one acquired in a moment, but I was so accustomed to Mr. Tucker's doing things well that I never even thought of it.

"Gee up!" he called, cracking the whip.

The plow horse and Peg geed all right and Zebedee, accustomed to running a small automobile or driving a light buggy, had no idea of the skill necessary to stand up on a large wood sled and safely turn it around without turning over. We twisted around on one runner and nothing but the fact that Blanche's great weight was on the upper side saved us from a very neat turnover. Zebedee lost his balance and, still clutching wildly at the reins, shot over our heads into the soft and comfortable snow. Pegasus and the plow horse fortunately took it all as a matter of course in their day's work, and although Zebedee's flying leap jerked them back on their haunches in a very rude and unmannerly way, they never budged, but waited for their crestfallen Jehu to pick himself up out of the snow bank and climb back into place.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he reproached me as we roared with laughter.

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me to use the knowledge I have obtained as a strap hanger on trolley cars to keep my balance in a wood sled!"

"This is the way to stand: put your feet far apart, so," said I, suiting the action to the word; and taking the reins in my hands, clucked to my team and we started gaily off, the sleigh bells jingling merrily.

Everybody had to have a turn at driving standing up, and in the six miles we had to go to reach Bracken, they had more or less mastered the art.

I love Bracken and am always proud of it, but there are times when it seems more beautiful and lovable than at others, and on that Christmas Eve it never had been more attractive. Fires glowed in every grate. Indeed, Bill, the yard boy, whose duty it was to keep the wood chopped and the fires going, said he had "done got lop-sided a totin' wood." The house shone with cleanliness and smelt of all kinds of delicious things: Christmas greens, mince pies, spiced beef, and dried lavender. Lavender was always kept between the sheets in the linen press and when many beds had just been freshly made the whole place would smell of it.

My Mammy Susan was a rather unique specimen of her race. As a rule, darkeys need a boss to be kept up to a certain standard. They are far from orderly, and wastefulness is their watchword. Now Mammy did to a letter everything that my mother, with all the enthusiasm of a young housekeeper, had thought necessary and that, combined with the solid training she had received at the hands of my paternal grandmother, to whose family she had belonged before the war, meant a very well kept house. Father and I were so accustomed to her wonderful management that we would not have known how wonderful it was if it had not been for the many summer visiting cousins who sang Mammy's praises while telling of their own vicissitudes with domestics.

Mammy's one fault was that she could not abide having an assistant in the house, and the consequence was we were in daily and hourly dread of her giving out and being ill. She had tried girl after girl, but they had always been found wanting. She preferred having a boy to help her, so the yard boy was called on whenever she needed him. She bossed Bill and Bill "sassed" her, but they were on the whole very fond of each other. Bill was about twenty, very black and bow-legged, and so good-natured that it was impossible to anger him. Bill was fitted out with white coats and Mammy and I had been endeavouring to train him to wait on the table, with most ludicrous results. He had once been on a steamboat and so aped the airs of the steamboat waiters. He would balance a tray on his five fingers and, holding it above his head, would actually cake walk into the dining room.

"This here ain't no side show Docallison is a runnin'," Mammy would say. "What the reason you feel lak you got ter walk lak a champinzee? All you needs is a monkey tail stickin' out from that ere new coat ter make you look jis' lak a keriller I done seed onct at a succus. Come on here, nigger, and take in dese victuals I done dished up befo' dey is stone cold."

And Bill would grin and reply, "You come on and put dis ice I done dug out de ice house in de frigidrater befo' it gits hot;" and so waged the merry war between the old woman and the boy.

Blanche was quite a favourite of Mammy's and she looked forward to her visit with enthusiasm. The girl, being on the footing of a guest, did not come in for her share of abuse that the old woman usually felt bound to administer to the young coloured girls who came her way.

She came out to the driveway to meet us on that Christmas Eve, her dear old head bound up in the gayest of bandannas and her purple calico starched to a stiffness that would easily have permitted it to stand alone.

The Tuckers greeted her with the greatest affection. I introduced Stephen White, who showed himself to be the gentleman I knew he was by his very kind and cordial manner in speaking to the old woman. Nothing is a greater test of breeding than a person's manner on such an occasion.

The old woman looked at him keenly and kindly. Wink was very good looking with his clear brown eyes and the rather stubborn mouth that the carefully tended moustache was doing its best to hide. Wink's moustache was really getting huge and it gave him very much the air of a boy masquerading as a man with a false moustache. Every time I looked at it I had an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. If he would only trim it down a little!

"My little miss is done named you to me befo'," said Mammy with great cordiality.

"Oh, has she really? That certainly was kind of her."

"Well, it warn't much trouble fer her to do it," explained Mammy, fearful that she might be giving the young man too much encouragement. "What she done said was that she ain't never noticed whether you is much of a hand fer victuals or not."

"Well, I can tell you he is," laughed Dee. "He is almost as good a hand as the Tuckers."

CHAPTER XVI

CHRISTMAS EVE AT BRACKEN

"Do all of you want to go to-morrow morning with Page and me to play Santa Claus to our poor neighbours?" asked Father at supper.

"Yes! Yes!" they chorused.

"I feel bad about all these little nigs who know I bring them the things and so they don't believe in Santa Claus at all. I always think that belief in Santa Claus is one of the perquisites of childhood. Sometimes I have been tempted to dress up and play Santy for them, but I believe they would know me. Docallison is seen too often to have any mystery about him."

"I have it! I have it!" and Dum clapped her hands in glee at the idea that had come to her. "Let's dress Zebedee up and let him go and give the kiddies their things."

"Good!" exclaimed Father. "Will you do it, Tucker?"

"Sure I will, if Page will do something I ask her."

"What?"

"I want you to recite your sonnet that Tweedles tell me you published in Nods and Becks. They have not been able to find their copies in the maelstrom of their trunks. I think from what they say of it, it might inspire me to act Santa Claus with great spirit."

"Sonnet! What sonnet?" asked Father.

"You don't mean you have not shown it to your father!" tweedled the twins.

"Well, Father is so particular about poetry – somehow – I – I – "

"Why, daughter!"

"You know you are! You can't abide mediocre verse."

"Well, that's so," he confessed, "but you might let me be the judge."

And so I recited my sonnet, which I will repeat to save the reader the trouble of turning back so many pages to refresh her memory.

"Pan may be dead, but Santa Claus remains,
And once a year, he riseth in his might.
Oft have I heard, in silences of night,