“Mrs. Vernon is not strong enough to do the work and she came up here to gain strength. You are a very good cook, but if you left us now we would not care to have you when we returned to the city, and you will not find mistresses like Mrs. Vernon everywhere. There are those who forget that a servant is a human being, and you might happen to get such a mistress as that. I repeat that your going would be distinctly discreditable, utterly reprehensible and in the nature of a bad act. Now, if you must go, I am not the one to keep you, but if you go you go for good, which is not likely to be good for you.”
“Yas’r,” said Minerva, blinking at me.
“Now, if I send for your accordeon, will you give me your word of honour to stay your month out?”
I had used such a severe tone, mingled with what sorrow I could weave into it, and spotted with incomprehensible words, that Minerva was much impressed, and she said in a tone that was already more hopeful, “I give you my word, Mist. Vernon. My ’cordeen is like human folks to me.”
“Very well, I will write for it by the next mail. Where shall I tell Mr. Corson to look for it?”
“Mr. Corson ain’t got it. I lent it to the jan’ter the night befo’ I lef’ an’ he fo’got to give it back an’ I fo’got about it till the wind began to moan at me an’ then I got mo’ homesick ’an ever an’ thought of it.”
Think of being willing to swap the music of the wind for the cacophony of an accordeon! And yet, when some composer of the future introduces one in his Afro-American symphony and Felix Weingartner gives the symphony in Carnegie Hall, there may come a rage for accordeons and we shall no longer associate them with tenement houses and itinerant toughs, white and black.
I hastened to write the letter to the janitor, whose name was George W. Calhoun Lee, and Ethel, being housebound anyway, went into the kitchen to preserve some blueberries. I do not like preserved blueberries; neither does she, but there was nothing else she could think of to do in the kitchen, and Minerva needed “human folks” pending the arrival of the ’cordeen.
The Dalton boy came for the mail at noon and he had with him a string of trout. They were fresh from the brook and were still wriggling. I saw him pass into the house, and I followed him into the kitchen; for a string of trout is a joy to the eye—and I had a suspicion that Minerva would not know what to do with them.
She stared at them with the interest of a child, giggling every time one twitched its tail.