“Yes, and Little Josh tells me Miss Ann is always company wherever she stays,” said the Judge. “He wasn’t exactly complaining but just kind of explaining. You see his wife, that last one, just up and said she wouldn’t and she wouldn’t. I reckon Miss Ann kind of wore out her welcome last time she was there because she came just when Mrs. Little Josh was planning a trip to White Sulphur and Miss Ann wouldn’t take the hint and the journey had to be put off and then the railroad strike came along and 16 Little Josh was afraid to let his wife start for fear she couldn’t get back. Mrs. Little Josh is as sore as can be about it and threatens if Miss Ann comes any more that she will invite all of her own kin at the same time and see which side can freeze out the other. The old lady hasn’t been there this year and she hasn’t been to Big Josh’s either. Big Josh’s daughters have read the riot act, so I hear, and they say if their old cousin comes to them without being invited they are going to try some visiting on their own hook and leave Big Josh to do the entertaining. They say he is great on big talk about family ties and the obligations of kinship but that they have all the trouble and when their Cousin Ann Peyton visits them he simply takes himself off and leaves them to do the work. Big Josh lives up such a muddy lane it’s hard to keep servants.”
Miss Ann’s lumbering carriage had hardly reached the far corner when the attention of the old men on the porch was arrested by a small, low-swung motor car of the genus runabout. No doubt its motor and wheels had been turned out of a factory but the rest of it was plainly home made. It was painted a bright blue. The rear end might have applied for a truck license, as it was evidently intended as a bearer of burdens, but the front part had the air of a racer and the 17 eager young girl at the wheel looked as though she might be more in sympathy with the front of her car than the back. Be that as it may, she was determined not to let her sympathies run away with her but, much to the delight of the dull old men on the Rye House porch, she stopped her car directly in front of them and carefully rearranged a number of mysterious-looking parcels in the truck end of her car.
“Hiyer, Miss Judith?” called Pete Barnes. The girl must stop her engine to hear what the old man was saying.
“What is it?” she called back gaily.
“I just said hiyer?”
“Fine! Hiyer, yourself?” she laughed pleasantly, although stopping the engine entailed getting out and cranking, since her car boasted no self-starter.
All of the old men bowed familiarly to the girl and indulged in some form of pleasantry.
“Bootlegging now, or what are you up to?” asked Major Fitch.
“Worse than that—perfumes and soaps, tooth pastes and cold creams, hair tonics and henna dips, silver polish and spot removers—pretty near everything or a little of it; but I’m going to come call on all of you when I get my wares sorted out.” 18
“Do! Do!” they responded, but she was in and off before they could say more.