The Carter Girls' Mysterious Neighbors

“Chloe! Where is your cap?” exclaimed that elegant lady.

“Well, lawsamussy! I done forgot about it. It do make my haid eatch so I done pulled it off.”

“And your shoes?”

“I’s savin’ them fer big meetin’ nex’ year.”

“And why do you wear your apron in the back? Put it on right this minute.”

“Well, Ole Miss, my dress was siled an’ my ap’on was clean, so I jes’ slid it ’roun’ behinst so it wouldn’t git siled, too.”

Nothing but the fact that the count was cooling his heels on the front porch kept Mrs. Carter from weeping outright. Old Miss, indeed! All she could do was feebly tell Chloe to ask the gentleman in.

If Count de Lestis had been ushered in by a butler in livery he could not have entered in a more ceremonious manner. He bowed low over the fair lady’s hand, kissing her finger-tips lightly. Even the spectacle of Chloe’s walking off, with her clean apron on hind part before and her shoeless condition disclosing large holes in the heels of her stockings, did not upset his gravity. He, too, realized that Chloe was no joke.

Afterwards Chloe said to Helen:

“That sho’ is a pretty man what comed ter see you alls. I ain’t knowin’ yit what made him stoop over an’ smell yo’ ma’s hand. Cose she mus’ smell pow’ful good with never put’n her hands in nothin’ mo’ than her own victuals.” Helen was weak with laughter.

“What fer they call him a count, Miss Helen? Is it ’cause he spen’ all his time a-countin’ out money? They do say he is pow’ful good an’ kin’ ter the niggers. Some say he likes niggers better’n what he does white folks, but I says that is plum foolish. Anyhow, he talks mighty sweet to ’em an’ don’t never call ’em low down triflin’ black rascals whin they gits kinder lop-sided with liquor, like some of the county gents does whin hands gits so fur gone they can’t git in the craps. He done started a night school over at Weston what his secondary is teachin’.”

“I didn’t know he had a secretary,” exclaimed Helen, “but it certainly is kind of him to try and help the poor colored people. I wish you could go to night school, Chloe.”

“Lawd, Gawd, no! Miss Helen! I ain’t got no call to larn.”

“Can’t you read at all, Chloe?”

“Well, I kin read whin they is picters ter go by. I done been ter school mos’ six months countin’ the diffunt years what I started, but my ma, she say my haid was too hard an’ she ’fraid it might git cracked open if’n teacher tried to put any mo’ in it. She say some folks is got sof’ haids what kin stretch an’ they ain’t so ap’ ter bus’ open, haids kinder like hog bladders what you kin keep on a-blowin’ up.”

“Wouldn’t you like me to teach you to read, Chloe?” asked Helen, feeling rather ashamed that this foreigner should come to Virginia and take more interest in the education of the negroes than she should ever have done. “I believe I could teach you without breaking your head open.”

“Anything you says do I’ll do, but I tell you now I ain’t got no mo’ notion er readin’ than a tarrapin. A tarrapin kin git his haid out’n the shell an’ you might git a little larnin’ in it, but my haid is groun’ what you gotter break up with a grubbin’ hoe.”

“I am willing to try. Let’s begin now! First we will learn how to spell things right here in the kitchen and then you can soon be reading recipes,” said Helen kindly. “Now we are making biscuit, so we will begin with that. First take two cups of flour,” and she wrote on the whitewashed wall of the kitchen: “2 cups of flour.”

Chloe was delighted with this kind of school, very different from her former experiences where she was made to sit for hours on a hard bench saying the same thing over and over with no conception of what it was all about. Now “2 cups of flour” had some sense in it, so had “2 spoons of baking powder.” “Lard the size of an egg” was a brilliant remark; “1 spoon of salt” had a gleam of intelligence, too; “1 cup of milk” was filled with gumption. In less than a week the girl could read and write the recipe for biscuit and was eagerly waiting for her beloved Miss Helen to advance her to cake.

CHAPTER VII

BOBBY’S BLAME DAY

Dr. George Wright was making a name for himself in his chosen profession. Older men were beginning to look upon him as an authority on nervous cases and now he had been asked to come in as partner in a sanitarium starting in the capital city of Virginia. Certainly he had been very successful in his treatment of Robert Carter’s case, so successful that even Mrs. Carter could not but admire him. She was still very much in awe of him, but he had her respect and she depended upon him. The daughters felt the same way without the awe. Douglas and Nan and Lucy were openly extravagant in their praise of him. Helen was a little more guarded in her expressions of admiration, but she had a sincere liking for him and deep gratitude not only for what he had done for her father but for his service to her.

She could never forget that it was Dr. Wright who had brought her to her senses when her father was first taken ill, making her see herself as a selfish, extravagant, vain girl. It takes some generosity of spirit to like the person who makes you see the error of your ways, but Helen Carter had that generosity. There were times when her cheeks burned at the memory of what Dr. Wright must have thought of her. How silly he must have found her, how childish!

After the experience in the mountains when the rattlesnake bit her on the heel and Dr. Wright had come to her assistance with first aid to the injured, which in the case of a snake bite means sucking the wound, Helen began to realize that what the young physician thought of her made a great deal of difference to her. His approval was something worth gaining.

Douglas had not told her she had written the letter to Dr. Wright as Bobby’s employer. She had a feeling that her dignity as teacher was involved and she must not confide in her family. She was waiting, hoping to hear from him, rather expecting him to write to Bobby and call him to account for his misdemeanors.

Bobby had been especially unruly all week. There was nothing he had not thought of doing in the way of mischief, and thinking mischief was almost identical with doing mischief where Bobby Carter was concerned. The deed was no sooner conceived than accomplished and the other children, who were inclined to be naughty, thought up extra things for him to do.

Putting a piece of rubber on the stove was certainly not Bobby’s idea, nor slipping chestnut burrs in the desk-seats while the girls were not looking, causing howls of anguish when they inadvertently sat down on the same. Bobby manfully took the blame for all of these things, however, confidently certain that no punishment worth speaking of would be meted out to him.

“He is honest, at least,” sighed Douglas, “and owns up every time.”

Friday afternoon on the way home she felt that maybe Nan’s name for their place was a good one. She was almost a dead warrior if not quite one.

“Oh, for a Valkyrie to bear me to Valhalla!”

Bobby was trudging along by her side looking as though butter would not melt in his mouth. What a sturdy little fellow he was growing to be! Douglas looked down on his jaunty, erect figure.

“Bobby, you are getting right fat.”

Bobby slapped his pockets. “That ain’t fat, that’s blame pay!”

“Blame pay! What on earth?”

“Oh, them is the gif’s I gits fer saying I done it ev’y time you asks us to hol’ up our han’s who done it.”

“Oh, Bobby!”

“You see, the big fellers say you ain’t man enough to whup ’em an’ you is too soft to whup me, so I don’t run no risk nohow. This is a top string I got for ’tendin’ like I put the rubber on the stove, – this here is a big apple I got for not fillin’ the girls’ desks with chestnut burrs, – this here pile er oak balls I come mighty near not gettin’. I sho’ did want to turn the fleas loose on Minnie Brice but the big boys was afraid I might not be able to open the little purse right and so one of them done it.”

“Fleas on Minnie Brice?”

“Yes, you never did fin’ out about it, so I didn’t have to own up. You know what a funny thin neck Minnie’s got, just like a mud turkle, and how she wears a stiff collar kinder like a shell and it sets out all around, fur out from her neck?”

“Yes, I know,” said Douglas, struggling with a laugh.

“Well, the fellers caught some fleas off’n ol’ Blitz’s houn’ dog an’ then they put ’em in a teensy money purse with a tight clasp, an’ while Minnie was leaning over studying her joggerfy, Tim Tenser dumped ’em all down her back.”

“Poor Minnie! No wonder she missed all of her lessons today. I could not imagine what was the matter with her. Bobby, you wouldn’t have done such a cruel thing as that surely!”

“Shoo! That ain’t nothin’. It might ’a’ been toads, ’cep’n the little ones is all growed up big now. We are a-savin’ up the toad joke ’til spring. First the fellers said I didn’t ’serve no blame money ’cause Minnie jes’ cried when she missed her lessons an’ didn’t scratch none, only wiggled, an’ teacher never did ask us to hol’ up our han’s who done it. But Ned Beatty said I was a dead game spo’t an’ I took the chanst an’ I mus’ have my blood money, an’ so I got all these here oak balls.”

“Bobby, do you realize that you must take all of these blame gifts back to the boys?”

“Blamed if I will!”

“Please don’t talk that way! Don’t say: ‘Blamed if you will.’”

“Well, wasn’t you a-talkin’ that way? Didn’t you say, ‘blame gif’s,’ with your own mouth? I’d like to know why I have to take them back.”

“Well, you got them for taking the blame and now you no longer take the blame but have told on the ones who did the naughty things.”

“But I ain’t a-tellin’ teacher! I’m a-tellin’ my own sister Douglas. You ain’t teacher ’cep’n when you is in school.”

“Oh, so that is the way you look at it! I suppose you think I am not your own sister while I am teacher, either, and when you worry me sick at school it is only teacher and not Douglas you are distressing so much,” and Douglas sat down on the roadside and burst out crying.