CHAPTER XII.
Accordin’ to promise Tamer Ann brung Jack to stay a few days with me while she went on to her Aunt Nancy John’s. Her Aunt Nancy don’t like children, bein’ nervous and highstericky, but she is a rich woman and Tamer has expectations from her, and goes there quite a good deal and makes of her. She is Tamer’s great aunt, and is one of two widders of the same name, so to tell ’em apart we call ’em Aunt Nancy John and Aunt Nancy Joe.
Jack wuz awful tickled to git to our house, and I wuz glad enough to see him. And he played round jest as good as a child could all the afternoon, and eat a good supper, and that night before he went to bed he come and leaned his curly head on my shoulder, and talked real confidential to me.
Tamer is a Piscopal, or, that is, what religion she’s got is of that persuasion. I know Piscopals that are perfectly devoted Christians and samplers for any one to foller, but with Tamer I guess it don’t strike in very deep, though she duz go through the motions in meetin’ wonderful for one of her age, and with all the diseases she’s got on her, gittin’ up and kneelin’ down with the best on ’em. And she’s real strict about follerin’ some of the rules and wants her family to; she had told me some time ago about the trouble she had with Jack keepin’ Lent, sez she:
“You know we ort to give up our own wills and do what is pleasin’ to the Lord in Lent, and I have the greatest trouble to make the children see the necessity of it as I do, and I am so particular to keep it,” sez she.
Thinkses I, Tamer Ann Allen, if you should try to do the Lord’s will through one day of Lent you wouldn’t try to make your only girl live a lie the rest of her life, and let your oldest boy go to ruin down the path of dime novels and cigarettes. Why, every one of the troubles she had pinted out to me wuz nothin’ bad in Jack at all, only the sins of ignorance which we read are winked at. But not a wink would Tamer give, not a wink. She had complained awful about his irreverence in prayer time and his utter refusal to give up pie and leave butter offen his bread durin’ Lent. “Why,” sez she, “when I asked him what he would give up he said apples, he guessed, he didn’t love ’em, and he said he would give up bathin’, too, and soap, and havin’ his hair combed, the idee!”
“Did you explain it, Tamer Ann, what Lent wuz for, and why he should make his little sacrifices?”