Grandma Bradford had two quite different ways of talking. When she spoke of modern things, or read a paper at the Ladies’ Circle, she used her modern manner; but when she talked of old-time things, she generally dropped into a style to correspond.
“There I set on the front porch,” she would say, “eatin’ my cold porridge out of the porringer. I was the only girl, and they allus called it I was some indulged. But I guess folks wouldn’t call it that, nowadays! ’Twas a hot evenin’, and Aunt Car’line hed company, and they wanted to talk by theirselves, so she let me set out on the porch with my supper. And when I got it et, I put the porringer up onto the porch jest as car’ful as I could, and begun playin’ with Rover. He was a real young dog, Rover was; a puppy, you might say, but a big dog, too. I dunno how ’tis, but dogs don’t seem to come as big now as they did then! And fust thing I knew, he lep’ up onto the porch, and got that porringer into his maouth, and rushed off downhill, me racin’ after him. And that was the last our family ever saw of it. And Rover never stopped till he got to the brook; it was roarin’ turrible, the brook was, ’cos it had be’n a rainy summer; and the more I called, the more he didn’t hear, but kep’ a-runnin’. And he run and he run, all along the brookside, till he got to the path that led square up to the Ellicksenders’ house, and then he turned up sharp—”
Grandma paused for breath, and let Felix take up the familiar tale.
“And the Ellicksenders’ house,” recited Felix, with gusto, “was no better than a den of thieves.”
“Yes, and jest then I heard Aunt Car’line callin’, and back I flew to the haouse. And when she said, ‘Why, Lydia Fairlee, where is the rest of the porringer?’—oh, my, wa’n’t I scairt? I hope it will be a lesson to you, Felix, the way I was too scairt to tell the hull truth. I was scairt o’ bein’ punished, so I told a part-truth, which is a near-lie, same as some boys I know of.”
Felix reddened, and deemed it wise to advance the story as hurriedly as possible. “You told her you put it up onto the porch, careful as anything—”
“Yes, but I didn’t dass tell her Rover hed snatched the porringer, and was carryin’ it straight as a streak o’ lightnin’ to the Ellicksender boys. No, sir, as long as I was in my right mind, I never owned up a syllable of it to anybody!” A note of sinful triumph rang in the old lady’s voice. “’Twa’n’t till two years later it all came out. I hed scarlet fever, and was dretful deleerious, and raved a lot about Rover and the porringer and the Ellicksender haouse; so Aunt Car’line knew at last jest what happened. That sickness spared me the rod, I guess!” Grandma chuckled at the thought of this immunity, but at once recollected herself. “No, Felix, ’tain’t any use. Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Again Felix squirmed away from any impending moral, mentally making a note to the effect that he must study ways to avoid scarlet fever, if not actual sin.
“But of course ’twas too late then to accuse the Ellicksenders. And one o’ them, the wust one, hed died in jail, anyhow; so you see, Felix, if he did take that porringer, his sin found him out, too. The youngest boy turned out real good, it seems. Grew up to be a minister, real celebrated, too. Some younger’n me, he was.”
But the career of the boy who “turned out real good” had no vital interest for Felix. His thoughts wandered toward the “wust one,” the one who died in jail. Not that he himself wanted to die in jail; far from it. But he certainly did not want to grow up to be a minister, either; and he hoped in his secret heart that there might be some middle course. A most determined little fellow was Felix. That day, while listening to one half of the porringer story, and repeating the other, he made up his mind that when he should reach man’s estate, he would get to the bottom of this Lafayette business.