"I knew most poets were kind of calves, but I didn't know they had to milk their poetry out of a genuine cow," said Pink, with a vulgar attempt to be funny, at which nobody laughed, not even Julia, and she is almost too tall and big to dance with anybody but Pink. She and Edith and Sue and I forgot to save him the dances we had promised him; and he had to dance with other girls he didn't like so much, until we all went home in time to meet the sun coming down over Paradise Ridge with his dinner-pail.
Then for five days it rained—heavy, determined, soggy drops; but the next morning introduced one of those wily, flirtatious days that come along about the last week in April in Tennessee. I awoke to the sound of sobbing wind and weeping clouds in which I had no confidence, and succeeded in convincing mother that it would be a beautiful day for me to go out to see Sam and Byrd and Mammy. She sent Byrd half a jelly-cake and a bag of bananas, and I got a jar of jam for him when I went down in the cellar to exhume Grandmother Nelson's garden-book. A bottle went to Mammy, which I suspect of being a kind of liniment that mother had to learn to make on account of the number of the boys and their bruises.
Eph was a tragedy over my taking out Redwheels, and I am glad that neither he nor I could prevision the plight the shiny new runabout would be in before it was many hours older. With a stoical reserve he loaded in the two young lilacs that were in the exact state of sappiness Grandmother Nelson had recommended for transplanting, but his calmness nearly gave way when I had him put in a dandy old rake and spade and hoe that I had found in my raid on the cellar.
"Please ma'am, Miss Betty, don't go and leave ole mistis's gyarden tools out in no rain," he entreated, plaintively.
"Oh, Eph, are they really Grandmother Nelson's?" I exclaimed, with such radiance that it reflected from Eph's polished black face.
"Yes'm, and they is too good to be throwed away on playing gyarden or sich," he answered, with feeling.
"Eph," I answered, with almost a choke in my voice, "they'll be—be sacred to me. Oh, thank you for telling me."
"Go on, child! you shore is ole mistis herself, with your pretty words to push along your high-haided ways," he answered me while he gave Redwheels an affectionate shove as I started down the street.
I didn't spend much time down-town, but I stopped at the post-office and got my mail to read while I waited at the drug-store for Mr. Simmons to put up some of every kind of flower and vegetable grandmother mentioned—if it was still in stock. He offered me a book of instructions, which I declined. I meant to garden by ancestral tendencies. And while I waited I looked over my letters. The volume from Peter I put aside to enjoy in a leisure hour, as I felt sure that I knew what was in it; but I opened another thin one that looked as if it might be from him, if he had written it in an unpoetic mood. It was from Judge Vandyne, and I then understood Peter's sudden determination to come down and live with Sam for a time, though I don't believe Peter knew the real reason of it himself. The judge is a great diplomat, and knows just when and to whom to be frank. We have always understood each other from the first vacation I spent with Mabel, and I value his confidence highly. He wrote:
No man can get a hold on the complex problems of this day and
especially the next, who doesn't go at them with at least some
sunburn on his neck and a few horny spots on his hands. Put Pete at
it, you and Sam. Your description of Sam's habitation and vocation
in letter to Mabel made me feel twenty-five again. I never had the
real thing; but Peter shall. Ease him along. If he kicks over the
traces let me know. When are you coming North again? Soon, I hope,
Your aged admirer,
PETER VANDYNE, Sr.
P.S.—Thought I'd better say that Dr. Herbrick doesn't like
Peter's weight—one sixteen. You understand.