‘Thorns?’ She pauses, as if wondering. ‘Oh no,’ says she. It seems a pity to disturb so sweet a faith; and Crosby, with a renunciatory wave of his hand, gives up the impending argument.
‘Awful lucky she went away so soon!’ says Carew, as the last bit of Aunt Jemima’s tail disappears round the corner. ‘She’d have led us a life had she stayed. She’s been on the prance all day on account of those Brians.’
‘Yes, isn’t it awful?’ says Betty.
‘Who are the Brians?’ asks Crosby.
‘Farmers up on the hill over there’—pointing far away to the south. ‘Very well-to-do people, you know, with their sons going into the Church, and their daughters at a first-class school in Birmingham. Aunt Jemima, thinking to help them on their road to civilization, sent them a bath—one of the round flat ones, you know—as a present last month, hearing that they were expecting the girls home for their holidays, and—’
Here Betty breaks off, and goes into what she calls ‘kinks’ of laughter.
‘Well?’ says Crosby, naturally desirous of knowing where the laugh comes in.
‘Ah, that’s it!’ says Dom. ‘Really, Betty, I think you might hold on long enough to finish your own story. It appears Aunt Jemima went up to the farm yesterday, and found that they had taken the bath as an ornament, and had nailed it up against the sitting-room wall with four long tenpenny nails, and—’ Here, in spite of his lecture to Betty, Mr. Fitzgerald himself gives way, and, falling back upon the grass, shouts with laughter.
‘They took it,’ gasps Carew, ‘as some curio from some barbarous country—a sort of shield, you know; a savage weapon! They had never seen a bath before. Oh my!’ He, too, has gone into an ecstasy of mirth. ‘I expect they thought it was straight from South Africa.’
‘Poor Aunt Jemima!’ says Betty, when she can speak. ‘It must have been a blow to her.’