I waited for him to say something more until I began to wonder, then to get impatient, that he let the horse jog along, the soft creak of the gig keeping time with the leisurely motions of the pampered beast, the master's eyes fixed upon the wheel he was tapping with his whip, as if he had forgotten me entirely.
I made a bold effort to reopen the conversation.
"I suppose Cousin Nancy asked you to build your house round, instead of square?"
I had heard so many different stories about the odd structure which was one of the county curiosities that I was anxious to get at the truth.
He laughed low and pleasantly:—
"Ask me! Not she, bless your soul! She would never have thought of such a thing. 'Twas me that studied it out, lying awake on windy nights because I knew she couldn't sleep for the roaring and whistling around the corners of the old house, and the wind humming in the chimneys and between the window-sashes like a bumblebee as big as a whale. It made her feel so lonesome and blue that many's the time I've heard her crying to herself when she thought I was sound asleep. We were going to pull down the old house, anyhow. It was a rickety concern, and inconvenient as could be. So I got Miss Nancy to tell me how many rooms and closets and all that she'd like to have in a house that was to be built on purpose for her, and for nobody else, and I made a plan of it all on paper, and then I sent her up to stay with her mother in Buckingham County for six months, going up to see her myself every Saturday to spend Sunday—like a nigger going to his 'wife-house,'"—here he stopped to laugh again—"until the last window-shutter was hung, and all the furniture put back and in order—Jerewsalem! how I did work! Then I brought her home. I wish you could have seen her face when we came in sight of the solid brick house—round as a cheese box—and I told her I had it built in that shape, so's she should never be made sorrowful, nor kept awake again by the wind a-cutting up shines around sharp corners, so long as we both should live—Amen!"
He jerked a blazing red bandanna handkerchief out of his pocket, turning his face clear away from me to do it, and blew his nose until the woods rang as with the echoes of a foxhunter's horn, then rolled the handkerchief into a ball and polished his face with it in the oddest possible fashion.
Most of the tales current about the round brick house had something to do with Cousin Nancy's whims, especially with her dislike to hearing the wind blow around the corners. Young as I was, I felt, after hearing Cousin 'Ratio's story, that he had done a beautiful thing in planning the ingenious surprise for his delicate wife. It crossed my mind, too, that she might have thought the house as ridiculous as other people did, yet pretended to like it sooner than hurt his feelings. She must be a good and devoted wife. Furthermore, I got into my foolish head the notion that it was nice and interesting to have Nerves. I resolved to get a set of my own at an early opportunity and to work them well. To this end, I would watch Cousin Nancy's ways and copy them as closely as a little girl could copy the behavior of a grown-up heroine.
She met us in the porch of the house, crying out with pleasure at sight of me.
"That's a little lady, not to be afraid to come all by herself to see two quiet old folks!" she said as she kissed me. "I ought to have had a dozen girls and boys for you to play with by this time—but I haven't a single one."