The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

Still, I hope the old place will be just as beautiful when my grandchildren get old enough to appreciate it as it is now, and not be sold and turned into a sanitarium, or a girls' school. The walls of the house are a soft grayish white, like a dear old grandmother's hair; and the mycravella roses in the far corner of the yard put such notions into your head! There are rows of cedar trees down the walk, planted before Andrew Jackson's time; and at night there are the stars. I love stars, especially Venus; but there are a lot of others that I don't know the names of.

Inside, the house is cool and shady; and you can always find a place to lie down and read. Cousin Eunice says so many people spoil their houses by selecting carpets and wall-paper that look like they want to fight. But ours is not like that. Some corners in our library look like Ladies' Own Journal pictures.

Cousin Eunice doesn't belong to our house, but I wish she did, for she's as beautiful as a magazine cover. And I think we have the nicest home in the world. Besides being old and big and far back in the yard, there's always the smell of apples up-stairs. And I'm sure mother is the nicest lady in the world. She wants everybody to have a good time, and no matter whether you're a man, a young lady, or a little girl, she lets you scatter your pipes, love-letters and doll-rags from the front gate to the backest chicken-coop without ever fussing. Mother admires company greatly. She doesn't have to perspire over them herself, though, for she has Mammy Lou to do all the cooking and Dilsey to make up the beds. So she invited Cousin Eunice to spend the summer with us and asked Bertha, a cousin on the other side, to come at the same time, for she said girls love to be together. We soon found out, though, that some girls do and some don't.

Cousin Eunice said I might always express my frank opinion of people and things in my diary, so I take pleasure in starting in on Bertha. Bertha, she is a cat! Even Rufe called her one the night she got here. Not a straight-out cat, exactly, but he called her a kitten!

You see, when Bertha was down here on a little visit last year she and Rufe had up a kind of summer engagement. A summer engagement is where the girl wears the man's fraternity pin instead of a ring. And when she came again this time it didn't take them two hours to get summer engaged again, it being moonlight on the front porch and Bertha looking real soft and purry.

Then the very next week Cousin Eunice came! And poor Rufe! We all felt so sorry for him, for, from the first minute he looked at her he was in love; and it's a terrible thing to be in love and engaged at the same time, when one is with one girl and the other to another! And it was so plain that the eyes of the potatoes could see it! But Bertha hadn't an idea of giving up anybody as good-looking as Rufe to another somebody as good-looking as Cousin Eunice, which mother said was a shame, and she never did such a thing when she was a girl; but Mammy Lou said it was no more than Rufe deserved for not being more careful.

But anyway, Cousin Eunice and Bertha hadn't been together two days before they hated each other so they wouldn't use the same powder rag! They just couldn't bear the sight of each other because they could both bear the sight of Rufe so well. This was a disappointment to me, for I had hoped they would go into each other's rooms at night and brush their hair, half undressed, and have as good a time as the pictures of ladies in underwear catalogues always seem to be having. But they are not at all friendly. They have never even asked each other what make of corsets they wear, nor who operated on them for appendicitis. Bertha talks a great deal about Rufe and how devoted he was to her last summer, but Cousin Eunice won't talk at all when Bertha's around. She sits still and looks dumb and superior as a trained nurse does when you are trying to find out what it is that the patient has got.

Cousin Eunice has a right to act superior, though, for while other girls are spending their time embroidering chafing-dish aprons she is studying books written by a man with a name like a sneeze. Let me get one of the books to see how it is spelled. N-i-e-t-z-s-c-h-e! There! I got it down at last! And Cousin Eunice doesn't have just a plain parlor at home to receive her beaux in; she has a studio. A studio is a room full of things that catch dust. And the desire of her life is to write a little brown-backed book that people will fill full of pencil marks and always carry around with them in their suit-cases. She doesn't neglect her outside looks, though, just because her mind is so full of great thoughts. No indeed! Her fountain pen jostles against her looking-glass in her hand-bag, and her note-book gets dusted over with pink powder.

Now, Bertha is entirely different! No matter how the sun is shining outside she spends all her mornings up in her room shining her finger-nails; and she wears pounds and pounds of hair on the back of her head. Father says the less a girl has on the inside the more she will stick on the outside of her head, and lots of men can't tell the difference. Bertha certainly isn't at a loss for lovers. She gets a great many letters from a "commercial traveler." A "commercial traveler" is a man who writes to his girl on different hotel paper every day. These letters are a great comfort to her spirit when Rufe acts so loving around Cousin Eunice; and she always has one sticking in her belt when Rufe is near by, with the name of the hotel showing.

Every night just before or just after supper I always go out to the kitchen and tell Mammy Lou all the news I've seen or heard that day. She laughs when I tell her about how Bertha is trying to hold on to Rufe.