The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

He always wanted to go there, hoping to find a bumble-bee’s nest, if not the hornet’s his grandmother had told him about. Inez was satisfied to go anywhere with Jeff, whose face always brightened at sight of her and then grew sad as he remembered another Inez in her mountain grave. They found the spot where a hornet’s nest had been, and saw a rabbit steal cautiously out from her hole and then in again as Nero started for her. They picked some wild flowers and ferns and then Inez grew tired of walking about and wanted Jeff to sit down and take her. When, as a baby of a year old, Inez had first held up her arms to him, he had shrunk from her with a feeling that he was unworthy to touch her. Roy, who was present, had something of the same feeling, for he never saw Jeff without a thought of the hold up. But the child’s persistence had conquered his prejudice and subjugated Jeff, who loved the little girl better than any living being. Indeed, there was no one else for him to love. He respected Uncle Zacheus and admired Fanny and reverenced Alice as one of the noblest of women, but his affection was given to the baby Inez.

“Taky me; I’se tired,” she kept saying in the woods until he sat down upon a log and took her in his lap.

“Now, tell us a story about Aunt Inez and the robbers,” Walter said, coming up with the dog, who stretched himself at Jeff’s feet while Walter lay down at his side.

The previous summer Jeff had told Walter of his home among the mountains and his life there with the other Inez, and his grandfather and Nero, and once Walter had heard his mother tell some one of the hold up and the robber, and boy-like this pleased him more than the cottage and the mountains. He had made Jeff tell him about it two or three times the year before and now insisted that he should tell it again, and begin where his Aunt Inez jumped over the wheel and Nero ran after the robber. Very unwillingly Jeff told the story, adapting it to Walter, who listened intently and did not allow him to omit any part of it which he knew.

“I wish I’d been there with mamma. Where was I?” he asked.

Jeff did not know, and with his respect for Jeff’s knowledge considerably lessened, he continued, “I’d have shot the robber.”

Inez, whose arms were about Jeff’s neck and who generally said what Walter did, replied, “I’d sot the yobber,” and her arms tightened their hold, giving Jeff a feeling of suffocation and helping to smother the groan he could not entirely repress.

“Now, tell about Aunt Inez and where she lived,” Walter said, and Jeff told him of the grand mountains and the waterfalls in the beautiful valley far away and the grave among the hills where his Aunt Inez was buried.

“Was she as pretty as mamma?” Walter asked, and Jeff replied, “I think she was prettier.”

“I don’t believe it. Do you, Nero?” Walter said, with a kick of his foot against the side of the dog, who answered by springing up and hurrying after the rabbit which had ventured from its hole a second time.