The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

That night when I went into the kitchen to talk to mammy during the cooking her mind was still on the subject of Miss Wilburn and marrying.

"Honey," she said to me, flipping over the cakes with great conviction, "I've been thinking it over and the long and short of it is that pore child's been fooled! I know them symptoms! She's been fooled and she's grievin' over it. Though thar ain't no use for a woman to grieve over nary one man so long's she under forty and got good front teeth!"

I said oh, I hoped not. I hated to think about the lover of my governess proving false! I told mammy maybe he had just died or something else he couldn't help. But she interrupted me.

"Died nothin'! That ain't no excuse, for thar's allus time to marry no matter what you're fixin' to do. Thar ain't nothin' no excuse for not marryin' in this world," she kept on, "be it male or female. You needn't be settin' thar swingin' your legs and arguin' with me about the holy estate!"

The very first minute I thought there was anything of a loving nature connected with Miss Wilburn I got out my diary to write it down, as you see. She had told mother anyhow to let me keep it as it would "stimulate my mental faculties" and they would never be able to make a chicken-picking person out of me. I'm going to keep it right here in the drawer and jot down everything I see, although I am convinced that the lover is dead. Julius and Marcella are down here now for the first time since they were married. We see them a great deal, for they love to go walking through the woods with Miss Wilburn and me; but I can't waste my diary writing about them now.

I just happened to think what a pity it was that I didn't try to find out the mystery about Miss Wilburn from Rufe and Cousin Eunice when we was up there last summer, for they knew her real well before we got her. In fact, for the first few days she and I didn't have any congenial things to talk about except them and tiny Waterloo. Waterloo's little name by rights is Rufus Clayborne, Junior, and he occurred at a time when I wasn't keeping my diary; but my grandchildren would have known about him anyhow, he being their little fifth cousin. He is very different from Bertha's baby, for he is a boy. I thought when I first saw him that if there was anything sweeter in this world than a girl baby it is a boy one!

Rufe and Cousin Eunice have lately been kinder New Thought persons, which think if you have "poise" enough there can't anything on earth conquer you. Rufe bragged particularly about nothing being able to conquer him or get him in a bad temper, he had so much poise. But when little Rufus was just three nights old and he had walked him the other two and he was still squalling he threw up his job.

"Poise be hanged!" Cousin Eunice told us he said, "I've met my Waterloo!" And they've called him that ever since.

When we were up there in the summer Waterloo was giving his father considerable trouble about the editorials. An editorial is a smart remark opposite the society column; and Rufe couldn't think up smart things while he was squalling.

"Oh, for a desert island!" he said one night when he was awful busy and couldn't get anything done. "Oh, for a mammoth haystack where I might thrust my head to drown the noise—I've read that Jean Jacques Rousseau used to do so! Listen, I've made a rhyme!"