At Home with the Jardines

by Lilian Bell

"No," he said, "if the blacks won't pull for love, they won't for a beating."

So then he spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward, digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an inch—two! A foot! Then urged by their master's voice, and for very pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they were switching their tails and stamping their hoofs and shaking their intelligent heads in the pride of victory.

As for Bannon, he stroked and praised them in an ecstasy of self-vindication, and was refusing the van man's offer to buy them at "a hundred dollars apiece more than they cost."

Those horses pulled our three vans up our hill, if you will believe it, and seemed rather to enjoy the grind they had on the other horses, so that, in a fever of appreciation, I had to go and feed apples and sugar to all ten of them, and to remind the blacks that the New York horses had been pulling those vans since midnight, all of which I begged them to take into consideration, while not in the least depreciating their own glorious achievement.

The initiated need not be told how, when hardwood floors are being laid, furniture is moved from room to room to accommodate the carpenters, and the uninitiated will not be interested at the recital. It must be experienced to be appreciated.

We lived through it. We learned not to object when the ice-box was set up in the hall so near the grate that the drip-pan had to be emptied every hour, and the iceman had to come twice a day. We learned to step over rolls of rugs and to bark our shins on rocking-chairs and to trip over hidden objects with only a pleasant smile.

We screened one porch entirely, and furnished it as a study for Aubrey. We had now papered and painted the house from top to bottom. We had put in gas, telephone, and electric light, and when we could no longer think of any further way to spend money, we turned our attention to the garden.

I longed for old Amos, my uncle's gardener and coachman in Louisville. His experience would be invaluable, and as the estate had been divided and no one had any use for the old grizzled negro, they let me have him. I adored Amos. It was he who had attended to all my childish pleasures on the plantation when I went there to visit, and, in turn, he thought "Miss Faith honey" could do no wrong. It is a comfort to have some one in one's childish memory who thinks one can do no wrong, even if it is only a servant.

So old Amos came and made flower-beds, and persuaded us to buy a pair of horses in addition to the one we had hitherto modestly used, and thus, with the aid of friends' and judicious servants' advice, we were by way of being landed proprietors, and came to look upon Peach Orchard as an estate.

Then the grocer's boy gave me the promised kitten, a common tiger kitten, which we named Mitnick, and soon afterward we acquired not only one cow, but several, our especial pride being an imported Guernsey, which figures quite prominently in my narrative further on. And as Aubrey's unwonted prosperity continued, we endeavoured not to let our riches increase too fast, by spending every cent upon which we could lay our hands on the place. But who, who owns a country place, can help it? Or who would help it if he could?