I had wanted to play ball in Parsons. It is a town some ten miles’ distance where all the trains stop. They claim that it has ten thousand inhabitants, which, of course, makes it a city. . . . The reason I didn’t play was because the minister, Mr. Diggs, called and asked uncle not to let me. I don’t know why religious people are so often disagreeable. Bradly-dear spoke again, and witheringly.
“Fine life for the daughter of Nelly Randolph,” she said, “to set here and rot! . . . The place is all right for your uncle--laws, he could mash his bugs and put ’em on paper anywhere--but for a girl----” Again she sniffed.
“But I love it,” I protested. “This sort of a life is all I want----”
“Your mother,” she went on, “spoke French and was a lady. She could enter a room and talk high-falutin and entertain anybody. She could wave a fan--and you”--she faced me and waved the lettuce quite as if that were an ostrich plumed fan and she a court lady--“and you,” she repeated, “you can wave a baseball bat, but enter a room? Why, you slide your feet under every rug that isn’t glued down, and you tangle up in all the cheers, and you say ‘Hello’ when you should say ‘Howdy,’ and--well, it ain’t no ways fittin’ or proper that you should stay here and act like you was training for to be Ringling’s star performer!”
I didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything to say. For all that Bradly-dear had said was true. I am very awkward--but--I like being so.
“Your mother,” she said, slowly and solemnly, “would ‘a’ wanted you to be learned right and proper manners----”
I stood up.
“All right, Bradly-dear,” I said, “if you really think she would--and Uncle Frank thinks I should----” And then I stopped speaking. I had never felt so miserable.
I went out in the garden, and Willy Jepson yelled over from the kitchen roof where he was mending a fish line.
“Come over and play catch,” he howled.