“Good-bye, suh! Good-bye,” responded Mammy, her equanimity quite restored, for her good sense told her that no reflections had been cast upon her “pa’tner” in Riveredge, or her identity suspected. Moreover, her late customer had put a new idea into her wise old head which she turned over again and again as she drove back home.
Constance was waiting with the lantern, and hurried out to the stable as Mammy turned in at the gate.
“Oh, Mammy, did you sell some?” she asked eagerly.
“Sell some! What I done druv dar fer? Co’se I sell some; I sell eve’y las’ bit an’ grain. Tek dat bag an’ go count yo’ riches, honey. Sell some! Yah! Yah!” laughed Mammy as she descended from her chariot and began to unharness her steed, while Constance hugged the bag and hurried into the house.
“What are you hiding under your cape?” demanded Jean as her sister ran through the hall, and up the stairs. Jean’s eyes did not often miss anything.
“My deed to future wealth and greatness,” answered Constance merrily, as she slipped into her room and locked the door, where she dumped the contents of the bag, dimes, nickels, and pennies, into the middle of the bed.
“Merciful sakes! Who would have believed it?” she gasped. “Four dollars and eighty cents for one afternoon’s work, and at least three-eighty of it clear profit, and Mammy has got to share some of it. Mumsie, dear, I think I can keep the family’s feet covered at all events,” she concluded in an ecstatic whisper.
[CHAPTER XII—Another Shoulder is Added]
Thanksgiving and Christmas had come and passed. Constance’s “candy business” as she called it, throve and flourished spasmodically. Could she have carried out her wishes concerning it, the venture might have been more profitable, but Mammy, the autocrat, insisted that it should be kept a secret, and the habit of obedience to the old woman’s dictates was deeply rooted in the Carruth family, even Mrs. Carruth yielding to it far more than she realized.
So Constance made her candy during her free hours after school and Mammy carried it into South Riveredge when opportunity offered. This was sometimes twice, but more often only once, a week, for the faithful old soul had manifold duties and was too conscientious to neglect one. Sometimes all the packages were sold off as quickly as they had been on that first red-letter day, but at other times a good many were left over. Could they again have been offered for sale upon the following day they might easily have been disposed of, but Mammy could not go to South Riveredge two days in succession and, consequently, the candy grew stale before another sale’s day arrived, was a loss to its anxious manufacturer, and caused her profits to shrink very seriously. Things had been going on in this rather unsatisfactory manner for about six weeks when one Saturday morning little Miss Paulina Pry, as Constance sometimes called Jean, owing to her propensity to get to the bottom of things in spite of all efforts to circumvent her, came into her sister’s room to ask in the most innocent manner imaginable: