Now it is possible that Mr. Robert Pagebrook had found out this fact about horseback exercise, and determined to profit by it to the extent of securing all the intellectual rest he could during his stay at Shirley. At any rate, his early morning ride with "Cousin Sudie" was repeated, not once, but every day when decided rain did not interfere. He became greatly interested, too, in the Virginian system of housekeeping, and made daily study of it in company with Miss Sudie, whose key-basket he carried as she went her rounds from dining-room to smoke-house, from smoke-house to store-room, from store-room to garden, and from garden to the shady gable of the house, where Miss Sudie "set" the churn every morning, a process which consisted of scalding it out, putting in the cream, and wrapping wet cloths all over the head of it and far up the dasher handle, as a precaution against the possible results of carelessness on the part of the half dozen little darkeys whose daily duty it was to "chun." Mr. Robert soon became well versed in all the mysteries of "giving out" dinner and other things pertaining to the office of housekeeper—an office in which every Virginian woman takes pride, and one in the duties of which every well-bred Virginian girl is thoroughly skilled. (Corollary—good dinners and general comfort.)
Old "Aunty" cooks are always extremely slow of motion, and so the young ladies who carry the keys have a good deal of necessary leisure during their morning rounds. Miss Sudie had a pretty little habit, as a good many other young women there have, of carrying a book in her key-basket, so that she might read while aunt Kizzey (I really do not know of what proper noun this very common one is an abbreviation) made up her tray. Picking up a volume he found there one morning, Robert continued a desultory conversation by saying:
"You don't read Montaigne, do you, Cousin Sudie?"
"O yes! I read everything—or anything, rather. I never saw a book I couldn't get something out of, except Longfellow."
"Except Longfellow!" exclaimed Robert in surprise. "Is it possible you don't enjoy Longfellow? Why, that is heresy of the rankest kind!"
"I know it is, but I'm a heretic in a good many things. I hate Longfellow's hexameters; I don't like Tennyson; and I can't understand Browning any better than he understands himself. I know I ought to like them all, as you all up North do, but I don't."
Mr. Robert was shocked. Here was a young girl, fresh and healthy, who could read prosy old Montaigne's chatter with interest; who knew Pope by heart, and Dryden almost as well; who read the prose and poetry of the eighteenth century constantly, as he knew; and who, on a former occasion, had pleaded guilty to a liking for sonnets, but who could find nothing to like in Tennyson, Longfellow, or Browning. Somehow the discovery was not an agreeable one to him though he could hardly say why, and so he chose not to pursue the subject further just then. He said instead:
"That is the queerest Virginianism I've heard yet—'you all.'"
"It's a very convenient one, you'll admit, and a Virginian don't care to go far out of his way in such things."
"You will think me critical this morning, Cousin Sudie, but I often wonder at the carelessness, not of Virginians only, but of everybody else, in the use of contractions. 'Don't,' for instance, is well enough as a contraction for 'do not, but nearly everybody uses it, as you did just now, for 'does not.'"