“Does everyone call you Uncle Hiram?” asked Elizabeth Ann curiously.
“Just about everybody,” Uncle Hiram assured her, smiling. “Your Aunt Grace and I long ago made up our minds that we’d have nephews and nieces by the dozen and we seem to have them.”
Tony was still on the front stoop of the Bonnie Susie when they reached home. But he consented to follow Elizabeth Ann and Doris out to the corn field. They wanted to see the corn being cut and Uncle Hiram said it was high time they saw the farm.
The tenant farmer, whose name was Mr. Lawton, and his two sons were cutting corn, and Elizabeth Ann and Doris watched them for a while as they went up and down the long rows. Tony caught a field mouse and was so pleased with himself that Elizabeth Ann scolded him, and told him he was vain.
“You run up to the house, and see my wife,” said Mr. Lawton, the first time he stopped long enough to talk to them, “and she’ll show you what she has been doing this morning and, likely as not she’ll give you a sample. Mother likes to give away samples.”
Uncle Hiram wanted to stay in the field and as Elizabeth Ann and Doris could see the farmhouse from where they stood, there was no reason why they couldn’t go alone to call on Mrs. Lawton. Elizabeth Ann thought she would be surprised to see them, but when they rang the old-fashioned pull bell and a stout, pink-cheeked woman came to the door, she didn’t look at all surprised to see two little girls on her door step.
“You’re the two little nieces Mrs. Kent has been expecting, aren’t you?” she said pleasantly. “I’m Mrs. Lawton, of course. Come right in. If you don’t mind coming into the kitchen, I can finish putting the labels on my jelly.”
Mrs. Lawton’s kitchen was most pleasant, though not, Elizabeth Ann decided, quite as nice as Aunt Grace’s kitchen which Uncle Hiram would call the galley. But the Lawton kitchen was large, and there was a great fire in the range and oh, my, how deliciously the room did smell.
“I’ve made forty glasses of grape jelly this morning,” said Mrs. Lawton proudly. “I’d like you to try some on bread and butter; I always think jelly tastes better on bread and butter than any other way you can eat it. And I’ll be writing my labels while you eat.”
She cut two perfectly huge slices from a loaf of fine white home-made bread, and spread each of them thickly with butter. Then she covered the butter with sparkling grape jelly, and put the bread on two blue and white plates.