Uncle Jason was my father’s half brother, and the stepson of grandma, who, the moment she saw them was actually guilty of the exclamation, “Good Lord! what sent them here?” Before any of us could reply, the door burst open, and the loud, boisterous laugh of Uncle Jason greeted our ears, intermingled with the squeaky tones of Aunt Betsey, who, addressing my mother, said, “How d’ye dew, Fanny. You pretty well? I s’pose you’re lookin’ for us, though you didn’t send us no invite? Jason kinder held off about comin’, but I telled him ’twas enough sight easier to eat dinner here than to cook it to hum.”
With as good a grace as she could possibly assume, mother returned her greeting, and then, taking her into her own bedroom, asked her to remove her bonnet, at the same time telling her she was expecting Uncle Joseph and Aunt Charlotte from Boston.
“Now, you don’t say it,” exclaimed Aunt Betsey, stopping for a moment in the adjustment of her cap, the fashion of which was wonderful, having been devised by herself, as were all her articles of dress. “Now, dew tell if that puckerin’ thing is a comin’! How nipped up we shall have to be! I’m so glad I wore this gown!” she continued, looking complacently at her blue and white plaid, the skirt of which was very short and scanty, besides being trimmed at the bottom with two narrow ruffles.
With her other peculiarities Aunt Betsey united that of jealousy, and after getting herself warm, and looking round, as was her custom, she commenced with, “Now, if I won’t give up—a fire in the parlor chamber. I s’pose Charlotte’s too good to pull off her things in the bedroom, as I do. Wall, it’s the luck of some to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”
Grandma, who was the only person present except myself, made no answer, and after a moment Aunt Betsey continued, “Now I think on’t, Miss Lee (she never addressed her as “mother,” for, from the first, a mutual dislike had existed between them), now I think on’t, Miss Lee, mebby Fanny meant to slight me.”
“Fanny never slighted anybody,” was grandma’s reply, while her polished knitting-needles rattled with a vengeance.
“Wall, I guess she thought Jo’s wife and I wouldn’t hitch hosses exactly, but the land knows that I don’t care the snap of my finger for her. I’m as good as anybody, if I don’t keep a hired maid and have a carpet on every floor.”
Here she was interrupted by the sound of horses’ feet, and rising up, grandma said, “I guess they’ve come. Will you go and meet them?”
“Not I; I’m the last one to creep, I can tell you,” was Aunt Betsey’s reply, while grandma and I quitted the room, leaving her sitting bolt upright, with her feet on the fender and her lips pursed up as they always were when she was indignant.
Uncle Joseph, Aunt Charlotte, Herbert Langley, had all come, and as the latter leaped upon the ground and I caught a sight of his tall, slender figure, I involuntarily exclaimed, “Long-legs,” a cognomen, which he ever after retained in our family. Shaking down his pants, he went through with a kind of shuffle not wholly unlike the Highland fling, ending his performance by kissing his hand to the group of noses pressed close against the window-pane.