Doctor Hathern's daughters

by Mary Jane Holmes

“She ain’t no mo’ like Miss Carline or Miss Nellie than I’m like Mas’r General Lee,” she said, and there was a stormy look in her eyes when she went in at last to wait upon the table, where Mrs. Hathern presided as easily as if she had all her life sat in the arm-chair she was the third to occupy.

She was a woman of theories and maxims to which she adhered rigidly. Among these were, “Early to bed and early to rise,”—“An hour in the morning is worth two at night,” and so forth. Accordingly, the next morning at six o’clock she was out upon the piazza looking very cool and handsome in her gown of lavender and white, open in front to show her embroidered petticoat as was the fashion of the time. Everything about her dress and person was spotless, and she impressed one with the idea that she had just been scrubbed and ironed. Her hair was never out of place; her collars and cuffs never soiled, or her garments crumpled or torn. Cleanliness she held next to godliness, and shiftlessness and untidiness next to sin. Born and reared amid the thrift and energy and activity of New England, she had no idea of or sympathy with the happy-go-lucky manner of living in the Hathern family, with Phyllis at its head. Hearing no stir, and seeing no signs of life in the dining-room, except a few flies busy with some crumbs left on the cloth the night before, she found her way to the kitchen, where Phyllis was very leisurely making preparations for breakfast. Later on, before presenting herself at the table, she was intending to don her Sunday apparel, but now, as the morning was very hot, her dress might be described as decolleté. A faded calico skirt, which scarcely reached her bare ankles, and a loose, thin sacque which showed all the creases and curves of her portly figure, comprised her entire make-up as she stood with her back to the door, stirring her batter for griddle cakes, and all unconscious of the foe bearing down upon her.

With a warning cough Mrs. Hathern stepped across the threshold, so startling the old negress that she dropped the egg she was about to break into the batter.

“Oh, my Lord, how you done skeered me,” she exclaimed, lifting both hands, in one of which was the dripping spoon. “Does you want anything, honey?”

Phyllis was very religious, and a leader at the meetings held in some of the freedmen’s cabins, where pandemonium usually reigned and the Lord was entreated as if he were deaf, or asleep. She had attended one of these the previous night, and on her way home had told a crony whom she met how she had rassled in pra’r, and had asked others to rassel, too, that she might have grace to do her duty. As a result of her rassling she was in quite a conciliatory frame of mind, and the word honey came from her involuntarily.

“I am not one of the young ladies, I am Mrs. Hathern,” the latter said, holding up her dainty skirts as she walked around the broken egg and the pots and kettles which Phyllis had not yet put away. “What time do you usually have breakfast?” she asked, and Phyllis replied, “Oh, we ain’t perticular, mos’ any time when dey gits up,—eight, nine,—sometimes ten,—jess as happens.”

Mrs. Hathern looked aghast. Such habits as these she was not prepared for, and she would not allow them either.

“Very well,” she said, “that may have answered in the past; for the future we will have breakfast in the summer at seven, sharp,—and at eight in the winter.”

In Phyllis’s astonishment the second egg, which she had brought from the cupboard, was in danger of following its companion.

“In de Lord’s name, how’s you gwine to git de young ladies up, or marster, either so airly. Why, it’ll take a hoss team to do it,” she said, and Mrs. Hathern replied, “I shall see to that, and you will see to the breakfast until my cook comes, when she will take your place.”