“Tom Atkins? yes, I remember him.”
It was Keziah who came to the rescue now by giving the signal to leave the table, and so put an end for the time being to the conversation concerning Tom Atkins; but that evening, after most of the family had retired, as Grant sat smoking in the moonlight at the end of the piazza, a slender figure clad in a gray wrapper with a white scarf on her head stole up to him and said, very softly and sadly:
“Now, Grant, tell me about Tom.”
Grant told her all he knew, and that night Beriah wrote in her diary as follows:
“Tom is alive, and wears a fez and a white flannel suit, and has a little, dark-eyed, tawny-haired girl whom he calls Zaidee. Of course there is or has been an Oriental wife, and Tom is as much lost to me as if he were sleeping in his grave. I am glad he is alive, and think I am glad because of the little girl Zaidee. It is a pretty name, and if she were motherless I know I could love her dearly for Tom’s sake, but such happiness is not for me. Ah, well, God knows best.”
CHAPTER X.—Doris’s Story.
THEA AT MORTON PARK.
Thea is here, and has brought her wheel and her banjo and her pet dog, besides three trunks of clothes. The dog, whom she calls Cheek, has conceived an unaccountable dislike to Aunt Kizzy, at whom he barks so furiously whenever she is in sight that Thea keeps him tied in her room except when she takes him into the grounds for exercise. Even then he is on the lookout for the enemy, and once made a fierce charge at her shawl, which she had left in the summer-house and which was not rescued from him until one or two rents had been made in it. Thea laughs, and calls him a bad boy, and puts her arms around Aunt Kizzy’s neck and kisses her and tells her she will send Cheek home as soon as she gets a chance, and then she sings “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” which she says is all the rage, and she dances the skirt dance with Grant, to whom she is teaching a new step, which shows her pretty feet and ankles and consists mostly of “one-two-three-kick.” And they do kick, or Grant does, so high that Aunt Kizzy asks in alarm if that is quite proper, and then Thea kisses her again and calls her “an unsophisticated old darling who doesn’t know the ways of the world and must be taught.” Her banjo lies round anywhere and everywhere, just as do her hat and her gloves and parasol, and Aunt Kizzy, who is so particular with me, never says a word, but herself picks up after the disorderly girl, who, with Grant, has turned the house upside down and filled it with laughter and frolic. Her wheel stays at night in a little room at the end of the piazza, with Grant’s, for he has one, and with Thea he goes scurrying through the town, sometimes in the street and sometimes on the sidewalk, to the terror of the pedestrians. Thea has already knocked down two negroes and run into the stall of an old apple-woman, who would have brought a suit if Aunt Kizzy had not paid the damages claimed.
What do I think of Thea? I love her, and have loved her from the moment she came up to me so cordially and called me Cousin Doris, and told me Grant had written her all about me, and that because I was at Morton Park she had come earlier than she had intended doing, and had left her old Gardy and Aleck Grady disconsolate. “But,” she added, quickly: “Aleck is coming soon, and then it will be jolly with four of us, Grant and you, Aleck and me, and if we can’t paint the town red my name is not Thea.”
I don’t suppose she is really pretty, except her eyes, which are lovely, but her voice is so sweet and her manners so soft and kittenish and pleasing that you never stop to think if she is handsome, but take her as she is and find her charming. She occupies the guest-room of course, and I share it with her, for she insisted at once that my cot be moved in there, so we could “talk nights as late as we pleased.” Aunt Kizzy, who does not believe in talking late, and always knocks on the wall if she hears me move in the Glory Hole after half-past nine, objected at first, saying it was more proper for young girls to room alone, but Thea told her that propriety had gone out of fashion with a lot of other stuff, and insisted, until the Glory Hole was abandoned and used only for toilet-purposes.
“Just what it was intended for,” Thea said, “and the idea of penning you up there is ridiculous. I know Aunt Kizzy, as I always call her, and know exactly how to manage her.”