When the girls began to arrive, Polly was busy pinning and hooking Aunty Welcome’s collar and belt at the last minute, and it was a labor of love.
“Don’t squoze me, honey, don’t squoze me a particle,” cautioned Aunty, puffing over the unusual exertion. “’Deed, I feel as if I had de equator twined around me now. Whar’s dat big palm leaf fan? Stonewall! You, Stonewall Jackson U. S. Grant Brown, you bring me dat fan instanter, sah, hyar me?”
Stoney grinned, and slipped off the Admiral’s steamer trunk with the fan. Stoney was proud of his name. Aunty had been strictly neutral during the war, and when Stoney had been born, she had been his sponsor, and had perpetuated her neutrality in his name, with a slight leaning towards the South.
“You had better go ahead with the trunk now, Stoney,” Polly told him. “Here come the girls. You go too, Aunty, and that will give you a chance to rest in the launch a minute.”
“Ain’t you most ready, you’ own self, chile?”
“All ready,” laughed Polly, as she took her long gray cloak over her arm, and her mandolin case. “I want to say good-by to Mandy and the rest.”
So while Stoney and the others trudged ahead down the path that led to the little landing by the riverside, Polly ran to the kitchen, and kissed the black, shiny cheek of old Aunt Mandy, the housekeeper, and shook Uncle Peter’s hand.
“Keep out of deep water, honey lam’ chile,” cautioned Mandy, the tears running down her cheeks fast. “And may de good Lord hol’ you in de holler of his hand safe from de fury of tempest, and leviathan, and—and cramps when you’s in swimmin’.”
“Amen, praise de Lord, oh, mah soul,” added Uncle Peter, fervently, and Polly went out into the garden, with her own lashes wet with tears, for they had been kind to her ever since she could remember toddling to Mandy after raisins and sticks of cinnamon.
As Polly left the kitchen, she saw the other girls coming up the broad walk from the gates, with suitcases, wraps and parasols, for the morning was a still, close one, and the latent heat of the day seemed to lie about the horizon in a golden haze.