CHAPTER XXIII
UNCLE JEFFERSON’S STORY
John Valiant sat propped up on the library couch, an open magazine unheeded on his knee. The reading-stand beside him was a litter of letters and papers. The bow-window was open and the honeysuckle breeze blew about him, lifting his hair and ruffling the leaves of the papers. In one corner, in a splotch of bright sunshine, lay the bulldog, watching a strayed blue-bottle darting in panic hither and thither near the ceiling.
Outside a colored maid—a new acquisition of Aunt Daphne’s—named Cassandra, black (in Doctor Southall’s phrase) “as the inside of a cow,” and dressed in a trim cotton-print “swing-clear,” was sweeping the big porch. Over the little cabin by the kitchens, morning-glories twirled their young tendrils. Before its step stood a low shuck-bottom “rocker” with a crimson dyed sheep-skin for upholstery, on which was curled a brindle cat. Through its door Valiant could see a spool what-not, with green pasteboard partitions, a chromo framed in pine-covers on the wall and on a shelf a crêton-covered can full of bustling paper lighters. In the garden three darkies were laboring, under the supervision of Uncle Jefferson. The unsightly weeds and lichen were gone from the graveled paths, and from the fountain pool, whose shaft now spouted a slender spray shivered by the breeze into a million diamonds, which fell back into the pool with a tintinabulant trickle and drip. The drunken wild grape-vines now trailed with a pruned and sobered luxuriance and the clamor of hammer and saw came from the direction of the lake, where a carpenter refurbished the ruined summer-house.
The master of Damory Court closed the magazine with a sigh. “If I could only do it all at once!” he muttered. “It takes such a confounded time. Four days they’ve been working now, and they haven’t done much more than clean up.” He laughed, and threw the magazine at the dog who dodged it with injured alacrity. “After all, Chum,” he remarked, “it’s been thirty years getting in this condition. I guess we’re doing pretty well.”
He picked up a plump package and weighed it in his hand. “There are the seeds for the wilderness garden. Bachelor’s-buttons and love-lies-bleeding and Jacob’s-ladder and touch-me-nots and daffy-down-dillies and phlox and sweet-williams and love-in-a-mist and four-o’clocks—not a blessed hot-house name among ’em, Chum! Don’t they sound homey and old-fashioned? The asters and dahlias and scarlet geraniums are for nearer the house, and the pansies and petunias for that sunny stretch down by the lake. Then there’ll be sunflowers around the kitchens and a trumpet-vine over the side of this porch.”
He stretched luxuriously. “I’ll take a hand at it myself to-morrow. I’m as right as rain again now, thanks to Aunt Daph and the doctor. Something of a crusty citizen, the doctor, but he’s all to the good.”
A heavy step came along the porch and Uncle Jefferson appeared with a tray holding a covered dish with a plate of biscuit and a round jam-pot. “Look here,” said John Valiant, “I had my luncheon three hours ago. I’m being stuffed like a milk-fed turkey.”
The old man smiled widely. “Et’s jes’ er li’l snack er broth,” he said. “Reck’n et’ll kinder float eroun’ de yuddah things. Daph ain’ got no use fo’ tea. She say she boun’ ter mek yo’ fit fo’ ernuddah rassle wid dem moc’sins. Dis’ yeah pot’s dat apple-buttah whut Miss Mattie Sue sen’ yo’ by Rickey Snyder.”