“Yes,” leered the old woman—and she grinned the whole horrid length of her empty gums—“the most of ’em does. But you must shet your eyes to it. The moment they know you swallow it, they’s wuthless, like horses that has run away once.”
“Hark!” said Eudora. “Ain’t that wheels?”
“It be,” answered her mother. “It be that old Ma’am Yellett after her gov’ment.”
IX.
Mrs. Yellett And Her “Gov’ment”
The buckboard drew up to the back or open-faced entrance of the Rodney house with a splendid sweep, terminating in a brilliantly staccato halt, as if to convey to the residents the flattering implication that their house was reached via a gravelled driveway, rather than across lumpish inequalities of prairie overgrown with cactus stumps and clumps of sage-brush. From the buckboard stepped a figure whose agility was compatible with her driving.
No sketchy outline can do justice to Mrs. Yellett or her costume. Like the bee, the ant, and other wonders of the economy of nature, she was not to be disposed of with a glance. And yet there was no attempt at subtlety on her part; on the contrary, no one could have an appearance of greater candor than the lady whose children Mary Carmichael had come West to teach. Her costume was a thing apart, suggesting neither sex, epoch, nor personal vanity, but what it lacked of these more usual sartorial characteristics, it more than made up in a passionate individualism; an excessively short skirt, so innocent of “fit” or “hang” in its wavering, indeterminate outline as to suggest the possible workmanship of teeth rather than of scissors; and riding-boots coming well to the knee, displaying a well-shaped, ample foot, perched aloft on the usual high heel that cow-punchers affect as the expression of their chiefest vanity. But Mrs. Yellett was not wholly mannish in her tastes, and to offset the boots she wore a bodice of the type that a generation ago used to be known as a “basque.” It fitted her ample form as a cover fits a pin-cushion, the row of jet buttons down the front looking as if a deep breath might cause them to shoot into space at any moment with the force of Mauser bullets.
Such a garb was not, after all, incongruous with this original lady’s weather-beaten face. Her skin was tanned to a fine russet, showing tiny, radiating lines about the eyes when they twinkled with laughter, which was often. No individual feature was especially striking, but the general impression of her countenance was of animation and activity, mingled with geniality and with native shrewdness.
“Howdy, Miz Yellett,” called out old Sally, hitching her rocker forward, in an excitement she could ill conceal. “You-uns’ gov’ment come, an’ she ain’t much bigger’n a lettle green gourd. Don’t seem to have drawed all the growth comin’ to her yit.”
“In roundin’ up the p’ints of my gov’ment, Mis’ Rodney, you don’t want to forget that green gourds and green grapes is mighty apt to belong to the sour fambly, when they hangs beyant your reach.”
“Ai-yi!” grimaced old Sally. “It’s tol’able far to send East for green fruit. We can take our own pep’mint.”