The Untempered Wind

by Joanna E. Wood

MRS. DEANS CALLS ON MRS. WHITE.

Young Ann White answered Mrs. Deans' knock, and ushered her in with awkward cordiality. Young Ann White's name was Ossie Annie Abbie Maria White, named after "four aunts and her pa" as Mrs. White said. The Jamestown people pronounced the first three names with a strong accent upon the first syllable, and the middle syllable of Maria they clung to until they lost breath and relinquished it with a gasp; as they uttered it, Miss White's name was a sentence by itself.

Mrs. White came bustling in before Mrs. Deans got seated, and after expressing her pleasure at seeing her, saying, "I declare, Jane, the sight of you's good for sore eyes!" entered with great zest into the discussion of village gossip. Mrs. White's sitting room was an apartment that evidenced loudly the taste and industry of Mrs. White and her daughter. It had a "boughten" carpet on the floor, and upon this were strewn hooked mats of strange and wonderful design, trees with roses, daisies and blue flowers of name unknown, growing luxuriantly upon every branch; bright yellow horses and green dogs stood together upon the same mat in millenium-like peace, undisturbed by the red birds and white cats that enjoyed the same vantage ground with them; but finer than any of the others was the black mat placed in the centre of the floor, as being less likely to be trodden upon there; its design was a salmon-pink girl in a green dress. By what was little less than inspiration, Mrs. White had formed the eyes out of two large and glistening black buttons. The chairs were black haircloth, each adorned with a crocheted tidy worked by Miss White; the making of these tidies was her life—by means of them she divided her life into times and seasons. Her one tragedy was compassed by the unholy fate of one which, being just completed, fell into the paws and from thence to the jaws of a mischievous collie puppy, and was speedily reduced to rags. Her great achievement was the making of a "Rose of Sharon" tidy out of No. 100 thread. She could always fix any date by recalling what tidy she was engaged upon at the time. There was the "Spider-web tidy," the "Sheaves of Wheat," the "Rose of Sharon," the "Double Wheel"; one she called a "Fancy patterning tidy," and another was known as the "One in strips."

The room had a large old-fashioned mantel-piece of heavy oak; beneath it had been a huge square fireplace, big enough to hold a roaring fire of logs, but the massive fire-board stood before it winter and summer now, for it was never used. The fire-board was also of oak, darkened to that tint that the virtuoso loves and the dealer in spurious antiques strives after in vain. But this year, Mrs. White had papered it over with wall paper, pink roses on a white ground, and a blue border.

"It does look so much more genteel and cheerful!" said Mrs. White, and Mrs. Deans agreed with her.

The mantel was decked with a gaudy china vase, with paper flowers in it; a lamp, in the oil of which was a piece of red flannel, thought to be decorative as it showed through the glass; a cross cut out of perforated cardboard, and two curious round objects like spheres of finely carven wood; these were clove apples. It was common in polite society in Jamestown to ask "How old is your clove apple?" The answer was usually given in years, and would have greatly surprised any stranger to clove apples. To make a clove apple, they selected the largest specimen of apple to be found (and in Jamestown that meant a very big apple indeed). Having got the apple, the next proceeding was to stick it full of cloves, as closely as possible; that was all—the cloves absorbed and dried the juices of the apple—the apple shrunk and shrunk, wedging the cloves tighter and tighter together; until at last they became so tightly welded together by the pressure that it was absolutely impossible to pull, pry, or cut one out; they were popular ornaments in Jamestown sitting-rooms. Mrs. White, when any reference to clove apples was made, invariably said that she remembered the time when tomatoes were called love apples, and kept for "ornamings," by which she meant ornaments.

The walls of Mrs. White's sitting-room were hung with pictures; there was a highly colored print representing a pair of white kittens against a red velvet background, playing with dominoes; there was a glazed chromo of a preternaturally blonde baby, sleeping in a preternaturally green field, bestrewn with preternaturally white daisies; a woodcut of Abraham Lincoln, one of Queen Victoria, and a diploma for the excellence of Mr. White's fat cattle completed the decoration of the walls, except above the door, where purple wools on a perforated cardboard asked again the piercing question, "What is Home Without a Mother?"

There was a centre-table, with a large Bible overlaid with a crocheted mat upon it, and a home-made foot-stool that tripped you up every time you entered the room.

Mrs. Deans had brought no work with her, and when Mrs. White produced a basket and began to piece a block of a quilt, Mrs. Deans begged for thread and needle. Young Ann White rose to get them, and Mrs. Deans said: