"Oh, excuse me," she continued with exaggerated politeness after a moment in which I did not speak. "Of course you ain't to be spoke to when you're breathin' like a heathen!"
I finished the prescribed number of breaths laid down in the rules for Yogi breathing, which I am trying just now because I am so tired of breathing the same old way, then looked down at mammy.
"A girl who can take a cold bath every morning and bait a fish-hook can take care of herself in this life!" I answered. "You ought to be proud of my courage."
"'Tain't no Christian notion for no girl to be wantin' to take care of herself," she began to argue, but rather than get into a debate and be routed, as she sometimes is, she suddenly assumed an air of excitement and cried: "Listen! Wasn't that the thing hollerin'?"
"The thing" here referred to is the new inter-urban line which now runs past our house, much to the chagrin of Mammy Lou, who calls it the "interruption line," because it is "always drappin' somebody off here right in the midst o' dinner time, when there ain't nothin' lef' but backs and wings."
This very disconcerting thing has happened so many times that mother found she would have to carry a full line of emergency tins in her pantry, all bearing on their labels the comforting assurance that they could be served hot in three minutes. These were ever small consolation to Mammy Lou, however, and she always serves them with as much humiliation as if the "Yankee beans" and "het-over peas" were the proverbial dinner of herbs.
This morning, though, the lid was shut fast on the tinned diet department and there was as much beautiful fried chicken sizzling drowsily on the back of the stove as northern people always give us Southerners credit for having. The best white and gold china was on the table, and a tall vase of Paul Neron roses on the mantelpiece, hiding father's bottle of rheumatism cure.
At mammy's suggestion that she heard the "thing" hollering I had thrown on my clothes without waiting to wipe all the water out of my ears, and had run down-stairs to see if mother needed me to pin her collar down in the back, for I knew she would be wanting to look her best this morning. We were all a little excited (things so seldom happen here) and I noticed that father was using his most rheumatic hand and arm every few minutes to take his watch out of his pocket; yet he forgot to frown.
The Claybornes were coming, Waterloo, Rufe and Cousin Eunice. We were feeling particularly anxious about the outcome of their visit, for mother and I had conspired together that a few political talks with Rufe had to cure father of his rheumatism. So we were watching every movement on his part with eager interest.
You must not imagine that we are unsympathetic with father when he actually has an attack. We rub him and put hot things to his shoulder, and I have actually gone so far as to let him explain the primary plan to me in words of one syllable that a child could understand, just to get his mind diverted.