She went to work with hot water and soft soap, repeatedly sousing the coat and trousers and socks, and rubbing them with her hands (washboards were an unknown luxury). Then, having cleansed and rinsed them, she hung them out in the July sun to dry, and turned her attention to the hat, which was the usual broad-brimmed black felt of the mountain man.
"Eh law, hain't hit a picter of misery!" she said, holding it out: "the brim all a-flopping, like hits ambition was plumb gone."
She scrubbed and cleaned it, and then took a flatiron and pressed the brim carefully while it was still damp, until it took on quite a jaunty stiffness.
Then came the shoes. The deeply caked mud was scraped and washed off, and a mixture of lard and soot generously applied.
By ten o'clock the suit was sufficiently dry to be pressed, and a truly artistic job was made of it.
Then Aunt Ailsie went in and waked Jeems. "You've put in seventeen hours good sleep," she said, "and I allow your stummick needs a leetle comfort next. You got plenty of time to get ready for dinner. I fotched you in a pan of warm water and soap and a towel and wash-rag, allowing you might feel to take a good wash-off. Then you can put on this here clean shirt of Lot's,—I couldn't get yourn off'n you to wash hit,—and these here breeches I washed for you, and clean socks and shoes, and then come in the kitchen-house and take you a shave with Lot's strop and razor, and then I'll crap your hair,—hit looks like hit hain't seed scissors sence Mallie died,—and then you'll begin to feel more like yourself."
An hour later, Jeems, washed, dressed, shaved, shingled, and combed, was indeed a transformed man—the hollow look gone from eyes and cheeks, twenty years from his age.
"If you could meet up with yourself, Jeems, you wouldn't never know hit was the same man rid up here a-yesterday," said Aunt Ailsie, proud of her handiwork. "You look now about what you air—thirty-two come September; I ricollect your birth, you and Link being nigh of an age. You look fitten now to start out a-courting to-morrow. Not," she added hastily, seeing an awakening gleam in Jeems's eye, "not to court young gals, of course, but to court them of an age with you. Of course, you'll never be what you once was, in those fur-off young days when me 'n' your maw used to take pride in your looks."
"Hit seems to me like two or three weeks sence yesterday," remarked Jeems, who appeared to be in a kind of daze. "I don't noways feel like the same man."
"You hain't," pronounced Aunt Ailsie. "You was in a pure franzy for sleep. And now you got hit, hit has wropt up your narves, and swaged down your feelings, and knit up your faculties, till you're in some fix to look around you and get things kindly straightened out in your mind, and take counsel about what you come for—the job of getting you a wife.