CHAPTER VIII
Well, to resoom backwards for a spell. Josiah and I wuzn’t goin’ to stay only two days and one night, but, good land! they wouldn’t hear a word to our goin’ so soon, so we stayed three days right along. But then, as Tamer said, think of the visits that they had made to us that wuz onpaid. Well, I thunk on ’em and thought likely as not it wuz our duty to stay. But I see lots of things there I didn’t like to see. I hate to talk about relations; I don’t think it the right thing to do. But I can’t help sayin’ that I did see lots of things that I wanted changed. Not Anna, she wuzn’t one of the things I wanted changed, no, indeed! she and Jack wuz the flowers of the family in full blow. Anna is jest as different from the rest of her family as light is from darkness, and a good deal the same way, and I believe Jack would come up a good deal like her if he got a chance.
One reason is why Anna is so different from her Ma, she wuz brung up by a aunt of her father’s, brung up by hand by Aunt Judith Smith, who, bein’ a old maid, couldn’t, it stands to reason, bring her up in any other way. For years after Anna wuz born Tamer wuz really sick, and this aunt lived with ’em and took care of Anna and thought all the world of her till her death, which occurred when Anna wuz fourteen. She wuz brought up dretful good, curious, hain’t it, she bein’ a old maid, but old maids are sometimes real religious, with good common horse sense, too, and Aunt Judith wuz. And I have always spozed it wuz her bringin’ up and her precepts and examples that made Anna so different.
You see, the ideals she held up in front of Anna wuzn’t fashion and expediency and outside show and vanity, no, indeed! they wuz truth and honesty and honor and simple living and high thinking. She held ’em up in front of her, and held ’em high, too, and propped ’em up by her own simple, straightforward, noble, self-sacrificin’ life. For it wuzn’t any comfort to her to leave her little quiet, comfortable home to take up her abode in the house of a Tamer or even a Hamen. But she shouldered her crosses wherever she found ’em and marched on with ’em silently and oncomplainin’ly and bravely, and folks didn’t know from her groanin’s how heavy they bore down on her shoulders.
She didn’t want to take the care of this worse than motherless child into her own tired hands. And she had plenty of means and no need to, if she hadn’t felt it to be her duty. But she see the little bark jest settin’ out, swashin’ and dashin’ round on the jagged rocks of life, and she felt it to be her duty to take holt of the hellum. Hamen had always been her favorite nephew, and she wuz dretful sorry for his poor little peaked lookin’ baby. So, as I say, she gin up her comfort and ease and histed this cross onto her tired-out back, and commenced trudgin’ along the road of life with it.
And wuzn’t it queer how things will turn out? This job she had tackled only from a sense of duty and in a real martyr sperit become the greatest comfort and pleasure of her life. For pretty soon Love, the great high priest, come in and sanctified her offerings of comfort and ease, and made her way glorious. How she did love Anna, and how Anna did love her. Of course clouds sometimes dimmed the horizon, shadders from Tamer’s personality and influence dimmed the clear sky that she wanted always to shine down onto her darling, also some lighter shadders from Hamen’s onwisdom.
But take it as a hull, Aunt Judith’s influence and sweet wise teachings carried the day, and Anna grew up a girl of a thousand, and at Aunt Judith’s death (which almost broke her heart) she wuz so headed in the right way that she couldn’t be turned very fur from it either way, not by Pa or Ma or any other onwise influence. The money she left Anna wuz the least of the riches she give her.
She died jest about the time that Tamer recovered her health, or as much of it as she ever did recover, so Tamer had the care of Cicero and poor little Jack. But then Jack had Anna, too, to kinder lean on, for Tamer had another spell for some years after Jack wuz born. But Cicero never would hear a word to Anna, he had got thoroughly headed in his Ma’s ways, and then I spoze it wuz kinder hereditary in him, too; he wuz born that way.
Anna is real good lookin’, her cheeks are as pink as fresh young damask roses, her complexion is clear and white and as smooth as satin, and her eyes are very dark, and soft, and bright, too, her hair is dark and wavy and kinks up in cunnin’ little curls on her forward and neck, she can’t do it up so but what them little curls will escape from the comb and cluster round her white neck and forward as if it loved ’em. Oh, she looks well enough, as I have told her time and agin: