About five o'clock the storm burst in good earnest, the rain coming down in heavy sheets at first and later settling into a lively drizzle that promised to be good for all night.
With the rain came a noticeable effort on the part of father's rheumatism to attract attention to itself; and Mammy Lou began clapping her hand over her right side in an alarming manner.
Ever since an attack of gall-stones which she suffered over a year ago, and through which she was safely steered by Alfred Morgan—which, of course, placed him upon an Alfred-the-Great pinnacle in the affections of the whole family—we have all turned in and helped Mammy Lou with her work. Especially when company is coming we agitate our minds over the actual meat and bread part of the entertainment, which I abominate, for personally I am domesticated only so far as frothy desserts and embroidered napkins go; and I am now able to understand the decline of hospitality in the South.
Why, since mammy's spell I have actually learned how to "do up" my best blouses, which is a joy so long as I am working on the front, where the embroidery stands out in satisfying bas-relief, but I am ready to weep and long for father's vocabulary by the time I reach the gathers of the sleeves. I should certainly let these go unironed if mammy did not always come to the rescue with a few deft strokes of the Gothic-shaped end of the iron.
I must say, though, that she accepts our help with an exalted indifference, for, since that awful pain in her side, things temporal have been of small moment with her. She has turned to the comforts, or discomforts, of a deeply Calvinistic religion, and is so keen-scented after sin that when I darn stockings on Sunday morning I have to lock my door and pull down the window-shades.
The only symptom of remaining worldliness which I have noted since her belated conversion, besides her overwhelming desire to get me married off to Alfred (my only rival in her affections) was exhibited early this last spring, when her above-mentioned "boarder" was a new-comer in our neighborhood and father had engaged his services to "break up" the garden.
Sam, the homesick stranger, made strong appeal to mammy's hospitality, quite aside, as we thought, from the natural susceptibility of her affections. The man was big and yellow, mammy's favorite color in husbands, and I scented danger one night soon after he came when I happened to see her place before him on the table in the kitchen a mighty dish of "greens" flanked on all sides with poached eggs.
He was busily plying her with questions, between mouthfuls, and when he asked her point-blank "what aged 'oman she was" she threw her head so coquettishly to one side that she splashed half a plateful of "pot liquor" on the floor, as she responded airily: "Oh, I don't rickollect exactly! I'm forty-five, or fifty-five, or sixty-five—somewhere in the fives!"
We held our breath for the next few weeks, expecting at any moment to hear that mammy had decided to out-Henry Henry Eighth, but her religion was too fresh and too enjoyable for her to resign it and marry the seventh time, which she realized would be a bad example for her progeny. Still, there was Sam, in dangerous propinquity, three times a day; and he was broad-shouldered and enchantingly yellow! She withstood, as long as it was in her poor, affectionate heart to withstand; then she compromised and took him as a boarder! After searching about for a means of easing her conscience for this concession she lit upon Lares and Penates as brands to be snatched from the burning; and she taught them such doleful facts about the uncertainty of their salvation that the last time Alfred was down here we persuaded him to threaten her with nervous prostration for Lares if she persisted in her gloomy preachments.
"A boy or girl's responsible for they sins as soon as the bumps breaks out on they faces," she was telling them this afternoon, when the storm was at its worst, and the two sat huddled with Grapefruit behind the stove, like poor little frightened chickens in a fence corner.