Meanwhile, things had happened at Holly Lodge. The Colonel had taken out his violin and played dreamily the old airs, von Weber’s “Last Waltz,” “Love Not,” and “Bygone Hours.” At sixty-eight, one has many Christmas days to look back upon. The faithful heart of Aunt Tulip in the kitchen was touched when the delicate strains of the violin floated upon the air.
“Ole Marse, he jes’ cipherin’.” Ciphering, in the negro language, means brooding with sadness and melancholy.
But then Aunt Tulip’s attention was distracted by the newcomer, Kettle. The boy, huddled close to the fire, his hands locked around his knees, his shining black eyes fixed on the blaze, was filled with deep content; he was warm, he had had a good supper, and he had escaped the dangers of the screaming steamboat. Those who had left him behind had not been too kind to him, and he had no regrets for them. Suddenly his enjoyment of the dolce far niente was rudely interrupted by Aunt Tulip, who herself seldom indulged in the sweet-do-nothing.
“Look a-heah, boy,” she said, “I’m agoin’ to give you a good washin’ and put you to bed. Boys oughter be abed by this time, so they k’yarn’ git in no mo’ mischief ’twell to-morrer mornin’.”
With that Kettle was ruthlessly seized, his clothes stripped off him, and he was soused in a washtub of warm water, while Aunt Tulip, with a scrub-brush, and soft soap of her own manufacture, scrubbed him from head to foot, including his woolly head. Kettle, who had rather dreaded the unusual experience, enjoyed it before he got through. Then Aunt Tulip, putting a nightgown of her own on him, covered him up in a little pallet she had made upon the floor of her own room, next the kitchen, and in two minutes Kettle had passed into the dreamless sleep of a tired little boy. Aunt Tulip began to examine the boy’s worn clothes. They were very ragged, and his shoes quite beyond help. But clothes, however ragged, may be washed and mended. So Aunt Tulip, who had worked hard all that day and every day, set herself the task of having something decent for Kettle to put on Christmas morning. She toiled at the washtub while Betty, afar off, was dancing, and the Colonel had long since gone to his bedroom on the ground floor. After Kettle’s poor clothes were washed and ironed, they were hung before the kitchen fire to dry, and then Aunt Tulip, getting out her big work-basket and brass thimble and putting on her horn spectacles, began the work of mending Kettle’s rags. She patched and darned industriously, and at last, with a sigh of profound satisfaction, she folded up and laid upon a chair Kettle’s clothes, including his jacket and trousers, neatly washed and mended and decent. Nothing could be done with his shoes, except to put some shoe-polish on them, and this she did. The Christmas stars looked down kindly upon the poor negro woman toiling for one of God’s poor, and the Christmas angels wafted a benediction upon her humble head.
When her labor was over, Aunt Tulip lay down to rest for a couple of hours. She knew well enough when Betty would return, and the fire had to be started up in Betty’s room, and, after old Whitey had been put in the stable, Uncle Cesar must have his hot coffee and corn pone. For Aunt Tulip, like many of her humble sort, was a minister of kindness to all around her.
It was six o’clock, but still the world was all inky blackness when the wheels of the rockaway crunched before the door of Holly Lodge. The fire in Betty’s room had been stirred into a cheering blaze, and Aunt Tulip was ready to help her out of her simple evening gown.
“I declar, Miss Betty,” said Aunt Tulip, as she unhooked Betty, “how some folks kin let a chile go as raggety as that air boy, I doan’ see.”
