“What’s this I hear about the disappearance of Miss Ann Peyton?” asked Major Fitch. “Someone told me that she has not been heard of now for several days and Bob Bucknor is just about having a fit over it. He and Big Josh are scouring the country for her, after having burnt up all the telephone wires in the county trying to locate her.”
“It’s true,” chuckled Colonel Crutcher. “My granddaughter says Mildred Bucknor is raising a rumpus because her father is saying he can’t go abroad until Cousin Ann is found. First, he can’t go because the old lady is visiting him and now he can’t go because she isn’t visiting him.” 239
“Well, a big, old ramshackledy rockaway like Miss Ann’s, with a pair of horses fat enough to eat and the bow-leggedest coachman in Kentucky, to say nothing of Miss Ann herself with her puffy red wig and hoop skirts as wide as a barn door, couldn’t disappear in a rat hole. They must be somewhere and they must have gone along the road to get where they were going. Certainly they haven’t passed this way or we’d have seen them,” said Judge Middleton.
“I hear tell Bob Bucknor has sent for Jeff to come and advise him,” drawled Pete Barnes. “And I also hear tell that the Bucknor men were gettin’ ready to let poor ol’ Miss Ann know that she was due to settle herself in an ol’ ladies’ home. They were cookin’ it up that day they all had dinner here last week.”
“Yes, and what’s more, I hear our Judy gal knocked that Tom Harbison down the hill with a milk bucket,” laughed Pete. “I got it straight from Big Josh himself.”
So the old men gossiped, basking in the autumn sunshine. They still quarreled over the outcome of the war between the states, but now they had a fresh topic of never-ending interest to discuss and that was their own debut party. Congratulations were ever in order on their 240 extreme cleverness in giving the ball.
Pete Barnes was ever declaring, “It was my idee, though, my idee! And didn’t we launch our little girl, though? I hear tell she is going to be asked to join the girls’ club. That’s a secret. I believe the girls are going to wait until Mildred and Nan Bucknor are on the rolling deep. As for the young men—they are worse than bears about a bee tree. Judy won’t have much to do with them though. But you needn’t tell me she doesn’t like it.”
“Sure she does. She’s too healthy-minded not to like beaux. There she comes now! I can see her car way up the street—just a blue speck,” cried Judge Middleton.
“Sure enough! There she is! She’s got her mother in with her.”
“That’s not Mrs. Buck. Mrs. Buck always sits in Judy’s car as though she were scared to death—and she hasn’t white hair either.”