That’s the way to go on if you mean to do it up brown!” chaffed Wynnette.
“Oh, how can you be such a mocker! Are you not glad to get home?” pleaded Elva.
“Rather; but I’m not in raptures over it.”
“Look here, young uns! Stop talking; you distract me. I can’t listen and drive at the same time. And if you will keep on jawing you’ll get upset. These roads are awful bad washed by the spring rains, and if we get home safe it will be all owing to my good driving! Only you mustn’t distract me by jawing!” said Mrs. Anglesea. And having silenced every tongue but her own, she drove on slowly by the light of the carriage lanterns, which only shed a little stream directly in front of her, talking all the time about the negligence of the supervisors and the carelessness of the farmers in suffering the roads to be in such a condition at that time of the year.
“This could never a been the case if you’d been home, ole man! You’d a been after them supervisors with a sharp stick, you would! But, Lord! the don’t-care-ishness of the men about here!” she concluded, as she drew up at the first broad gate across the road leading into the Mondreer grounds.
Her passengers thought, but did not say, that if the lady on the box could not listen and drive at the same time, she could certainly drive and talk pretty continuously at the same time.
“Here, you lazy nigger, Jake! Wake up and jump down and open this here gate!” exclaimed Mrs. Anglesea, giving the old sleeper such a sharp grip and hard shake that he yelled before he woke and said he dreamed a limb of a tree had caught him and knocked him out of his seat.
However, he soon came to a sense of the situation, half climbed and half tumbled down to the ground and opened the gate to let the break pass through.
The house was now in sight and lighted up from garret to basement.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Elva.