“Rattlesnake ile,—that’s what she is. Double distilled, an’ forty-thousandth purity. Volatile as gas. Can’t fix it in no ordinary bottles, with no ordinary stoppers. Worth its weight in gold; worth more if it couldn’t be replaced. Sample I brought from my Little Un’s property,—from the rancho er the mountain o’ Santa Trinidad. Hm! Didn’t mean to say that—yet. But no matter. Step lively now. An’ if ye do, I’ll rub some o’ this precious stuff on your worthless old back, an’ if I don’t bounce the lumbago, my name ain’t Bob, an’ I hain’t never rid on no Santa Felisa round-up.”
There was tonic, elixir, in the very tone; not only for the stiff-jointed Mr. Tubbs, but for every individual there present.
Mary Jane, proper Baptist that she was, almost executed a fancy dance; but recollecting herself in time, went hurrying away to her kitchen, her cracked, quavering, but joyful voice proclaiming in song,—
“I’ve reached a land of corn and wine,
And all its riches freely mine.
Here shines undimmed one blissful day,
For all my night has passed away.”
Mr. Calthorp crossed over and gave his mother a grateful kiss, then walked out whistling.
Steenie slipped down and watched her grandmother fold the beneficent scrap of white paper safely away in her pocket-book, then danced a pas-de-seul without any of Mary Jane’s scruples of conscience.
And even Madam Calthorp began humming softly some melody of her youth, and moved the chairs out of the room, to further the cheerful labor of Kentucky Bob, who had the carpet unrolled and into place, “in the jerk of a lamb’s tail,” and who whistled gayly, till he remembered that he was the guest of a high-bred lady, when he restrained himself, and worked away all the faster, maybe.