This was a part of Fan’s letter. The rest was full of fun and jokes and anticipations of the Thanksgiving dinner she was to eat at home, with some directions to Phyllis how to cook it, and one or two allusions to “the house that Jack built,” and which she knew she should like. She closed with: “Your wretched sister, who knows how Paul felt when he wrote to the Romans, chap. 7, verse 15, ‘What I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that do I.’ If as good a man as Paul whiffled round like that, what can you expect of a weak, wicked girl like Fan Hathern?”
This letter troubled me a great deal at first. What did it mean? What could it mean except that as the time drew near Fan shrank from giving up her girlish life and becoming the wife of Jack Fullerton. If this were so I had no patience with her. After a little reflection, however, I concluded that, as she had hinted, too much sight-seeing and dissipation had unsettled her mind and liver, making her both bilious and morbid. She would be all right again when once in the quiet, healthful atmosphere of home; and dismissing all anxiety from my mind, I began to make preparations for the Thanksgiving dinner at which Miss Errington and Jack were to be present. In this Phyllis was quite as much interested as myself. For weeks she had had a turkey fattening in a little pen, and every time she fed it she informed it how many days more it had to live before she cut off its head, and how many hours it would probably take to roast it, information which must have been very exhilarating to the bird, if it could have understood it. After her fashion she had cleaned the house, which, borrowing a term which she had heard from Mrs. Hathern and Norah O’Rourke, was in apple pie order. “Yankee apple pie, too,” she said, when telling me how much soap and water she had used. “I only give the kitchen a lick and a promise, as nobody ’ll meddle thar but myself,” she said.
I expressed my approbation of the cleaning, although I knew that in all human probability she had not raised a window when she washed it, and that if Mrs. Hathern could have walked in to investigate she would have found the dust piled high on the top of the doors where Phyllis had not thought to look. But Mrs. Hathern was where neither moth nor rust corrupt, nor dust gathers on the golden walls, and Phyllis was mistress of the kitchen. The room which father had occupied had not been slept in since he died, but we arranged it now for Jack, who was to spend the night of Thanksgiving with us. Carl’s room was to be given to Miss Errington, and both were in readiness, as was everything else so far as I knew, and I was looking forward anxiously to the coming Tuesday, when our house would be filled with the sound of laughter and happy voices.
I had not been feeling very well and was, besides, so busy with my own affairs that I had not been to The Plateau for a week. I knew Jack was there early and late, with men and women both, pushing matters as fast as possible, and that some of the rooms were settled. Sunday he was out of town, but Monday morning he came to The Elms on his way to The Plateau, figuratively walking upon air, he was so elated. I think I never saw a happier light in any eyes than shone in Jack’s, or heard a more joyful ring in any human voice than there was in his as he bade me good morning, and added, “They will soon be on their way. Hurrah!”
Catching up Paul he swung him on his shoulder and carried him two or three times across the wide hall. Then, putting him down and rubbing his hands together, he continued: “I tell you, Annie, the house is a daisy, and so she will think. Four of the rooms are settled,—square hall, dining-room, parlor and our room,—and I am coming round in my buggy this afternoon to take you up there. I’ve had fires in all the grates to dry out any dampness, and everything is perfect. The bedrooms and kitchen and such like are not settled, but they soon will be. I have ordered a range just like yours and expect it every day, and,—do you know who is to be the high cockolorum in the kitchen?”
I could not guess, and he continued: “No darkies for me, but the real article from Yankee land,—Miss Norah O’Rourke! What do you think of that?”
“Norah,” I exclaimed; “Norah!”
“Yes, Norah,” he replied. “We have had quite a brisk correspondence, Norah and I. She wrote me three or four weeks ago, confidentially, saying Carl was tired of keeping up his big establishment in Boston,—that he was going to rent it and travel. That would throw her out of a home. Next to Boston she liked The Elms, and would come back, provided that lazy, sozzlin’ nigger wasn’t here. I think that’s the way she put it. She couldn’t abide the blacks, with their shiftlessness, she said, and it wasn’t healthy to be with them. Her temper was never the sweetest at its best, and they riled her so, slattin’ things round, and het her blood so hot that she was apt to break out all over with a kind of rash. I am using her vernacular as far as possible; but to come to the point. If you hadn’t Phyllis and would dispose of any colored gentry you might have and wanted her, she would come for a price within your means. She could afford it, as she had recently got a pension of eight dollars a month on account of her brother Mike, who was killed at Gettysburg. I don’t believe she was ever really dependent upon him for support, and don’t quite understand how she got it. Somebody did some tall swearing. But that’s not my matter. If I were to swear a blue streak from here to Washington, I couldn’t get a pension. Was on the wrong side of the fence. But to proceed. If you had Phyllis, I was to say nothing. If you hadn’t, I was to ask you if you wanted her. You had Phyllis. I said nothing, but remembering to have heard Fan say that she would give more for Norah’s little finger than for Phyllis’s whole body, so far as order and neatness were concerned, I wrote to Norah, telling her my prospects and asking her how she would like to live with us. ‘Tip-top,’ she said, and she will be here within a week,—go right into the house and have it all in readiness from stem to stern by Christmas. For once I am in luck, and Fan is coming to-morrow. Do you realize it? To-morrow we shall see her. I can hardly wait. Be ready this afternoon at two sharp. Au revoir.”
As he went down the steps two at a time he was singing:
“Never morning dawned so gaily,