"You've a gallant stroke, Evelina," he said softly, as I at last gained possession of my own sight. "And here I am with a hand out to you for assistance in carrying out your own plan that seems to be just the thing to—"
"Say, Cousin James. Aunt Marfy says for you to come home to breakfast right away. Mis' Hargrove won't let nobody begin until you says the blessing, and Cousin Jasmine have got the headache from waiting for her coffee. What do you want to fool with Evelina this time of day for anyway?" And with the delivery of which message and reproof Henrietta stood on the edge of the path looking down upon us with great and scornful interest.
"You've got on your night shirt and haven't combed your hair or washed your face," she continued sternly. "There'll be hell to pay with all the breakfast getting cold, and I'm empty down to my feet. Come on, quick!"
"Henrietta," I said, sternly, as I rose to my feet, "I've asked you once not to say ugly words like that."
"I'll go make the lightning toilet, Henrietta. Do run like a good girl and ask Mrs. Hargrove to let Cousin Jasmine have her cup of coffee right away. I'll be there before the rest are dead from hunger," and Cousin James skilfully interrupted the threatened feminine clash as he emptied my glass bowl into his tin can and stuck the sharp stick in the ground for future reference. Even Henrietta's pointed allusion to his toilet had not in the least ruffled his equanimity or brought a shade of consciousness to his face.
"Mis' Hargrove said that the Bible said not for any woman to say a blessing at any table or at any place that anybody can hear her, when Cousin Marfy wanted to be polite to the Lord by saying just a little one and go on before we was all too hungry," answered Henrietta, in her most scornfully tolerant voice. "If women eat out loud before everybody why can't they pray their thank-you out loud like any man?"
"Answer her, Evelina," laughed Cousin James, as he hurried down the walk away from us.
"Henrietta," I asked, in a calmly argumentative tone of voice as she and I walked up the path to the house, "didn't Mr. Haley talk to you just yesterday and tell you how wicked it is for you to use—use such strong words as you do?"
Mr. Haley had told me just a few days ago that he and Aunt Augusta had agreed to open their campaign of reform on Henrietta by a pastoral lecture from him, to be followed strongly by a neighborly one from her.
"No, he never did any such thing," answered Henrietta, promptly—and what Henrietta says is always the truth, because she isn't afraid of anybody or anything enough to tell a lie—-"he just telled me over and over in a whole lot of words how I ought to love and be good to Sallie. If I was to love Sallie that kind of way, he said, I would be so busy I couldn't do none of the things Sallie don't like to do herself and makes me do. 'Stid er saying, 'my precious mother, I love you and want to be good because you want me to,' about every hour, I had better wipe the twins' noses, and wash the dirt often them, and light Aunt Dilsie's phthisic pipe, and get things upstairs for Sallie and Miss Jasmine and everybody when they are downstairs. I'm too busy, I am, to be so religious. And I'm too hungry to talk any more about it." With which she departed.