Here was a chance for Rex to inquire into his aunt’s antecedents, of which he knew little, as she was very reticent with regard to her early life. He knew that she was an orphan and had no near relatives, and that she had once lived in Worcester, and that was all. The clerkship and the shoe-binding were news to him; he did not even know before that she was Lucy Ann, as she had long ago dropped the Ann as too plebeian; but, with the delicacy of a true gentleman, he would not ask a question of this man, who, he was sure, would tell all he knew and a great deal more, if urged.
“I wonder what Aunt Lucy would say to being visited and cousined by this Yankee, who calls her an old lady?” he thought, as he said that she was very well and had just sailed for Europe, adding that she was still handsome and very young-looking.
“You don’t say!” Phineas exclaimed, and began at once to calculate her age, basing his data on a spelling-school in Sturbridge when she was twelve years old and had spelled him down, a circus in Fiskdale which she had attended with him when she was fifteen, and the time when he had asked for her company in Worcester. Naturally, he made her several years older than she really was.
But she was not there to protest, and Rex did not care. He was more interested in his projected purchase than in his aunt’s age, and he asked if the Hallam farm were good or bad.
“Wa-all, ’taint neither,” Phineas replied. “You see, it’s pretty much run down for want of means and management. The Square ain’t no kind of a farmer, and never was, and he didn’t ort to be one, but his wife persuaded him. My land, how a woman can twist a man round her fingers, especially if she’s kittenish and pretty and soft-spoken, as the Square’s wife was. She was from Georgy, and nothin’ would do but she must live on a farm and have it fixed up as nigh like her father’s plantation as she could. She took down the big chimbleys and built some outside,—queer-lookin’ till the woodbine run up and covered ’em clear to the top, and now they’re pretty. She made a bath-room out of the but’try, and a but’try out of the meal-room. She couldn’t have niggers, nor, of course, nigger cabins, but she got him to build a lot of other out-houses, which cost a sight,—stables, and a dog-kennel.”
“Dog-kennels!” Rex interrupted, feeling more desirous than ever for a place with kennels already in it. “How large are they?”
“There ain’t but one,” Phineas said, “and that ain’t there now. It was turned into a pig-pen long ago, for the Square can’t abide dogs; but there’s a hen-house, and smoke-house, and ice-house, and house over the well, and flower-garden with box borders, and yard terraced down to the orchard, with brick walls and steps, and a dammed brook——”
“A what?” Reginald asked, in astonishment.
“Wa-all, I should smile if you thought I meant disrespect for the Bible; I didn’t. I’m a church member,—a Free Methodist and class-leader, and great on exhortin’ and experiencin’, they say. I don’t swear. You spelt the word wrong, with an n instead of two m’s, that’s what’s the matter. That’s the word your aunt Lucy Ann spelt me down on at the spellin’-school. We two stood up longest and were tryin’ for the medal. I was more used to the word with an n in it than I am now, and got beat. What I mean about the brook is that it runs acrost the road into the orchard, and Mis’ Leighton had it dammed up with boards and stones to make a waterfall, with a rustic bridge below it, and a butternut tree and a seat under it, where you can set and view nature. But bless your soul, such things don’t pay, and if Mis’ Leighton had lived she’d of ruined the Square teetotally, but she died, poor thing, and the Square’s hair turned white in six months.”
“What family has Mr. Leighton?” Rex asked, and Phineas replied: