“I can find you something,” knowingly replied Angela, “and something I dare say those old Greek ragamuffins, of whom you think so much, did in Thessaly and thereabouts.”
“My dearest Sophie and my dear Angela,” cried Colonel Tremaine valiantly, “I feel that I must do my share in this domestic cataclysm. I cannot chop wood—I am seventy-two years old—but I believe that I could wind off the reels the cotton for the looms. I will do my best, my dear Angela, if you will kindly instruct me.”
Angela stopped her sweeping and ran and fetched a cotton reel—a rude contrivance consisting of a slender stick of wood about two feet high stuck in a wooden box, with a large reel at the top on which the hanks of cotton, fresh from the spinning wheels, were wound into balls for the old-fashioned hand looms in the loom house.
“I think,” said Colonel Tremaine, with profound interest in the subject, “that it would be better to carry the paraphernalia in the drawing-room. Like most of my sex, I dislike extraneous objects in my library.”
Just then Archie appeared, red, perspiring, but grinning with delight at his wood-chopping performance. He was charmed with the thought of seeing his father wind cotton, and ran with the reel, which he placed in the drawing-room. Then Angela put a hank of cotton on it, found the end, started the ball, and instructed Colonel Tremaine in his new employment. Mrs. Tremaine, quite woe-begone, yet complimented Angela and Archie upon their readiness and industry. It was as if the two were again children.
Hector and Mammy Tulip both came in to see the extraordinary sight of “ole Marse wukkin’.” Hector was indignant at the turn of affairs.
“I ’clare, Marse,” he said, with solemn disapproval, “I never speck fur to see you wukkin’ like Saul an’ de witch uv Endaw in de Bible. I tho’t you was proud enough fur to lay down an’ starve ’fore you demean you’sef wid wuk.”
“That is what you would do, you black scoundrel,” inadvertently responded Colonel Tremaine, forgetting that others were present, and then hastily adding: “Not that I have ever observed in you any serious disinclination to do your proper work.” Which showed a very great want of observation on Colonel Tremaine’s part.
The Colonel, sitting in a large pink satin armchair with the reel before him, began his self-imposed domestic labors, remarking grimly to Mrs. Tremaine: “It can no longer be said, my dearest Sophie, that there is a distaff side to our family.”
“My dear,” replied Mrs. Tremaine in pathetic admiration, “the spectacle of you, at your time of life, eager to assist in the household labors and to lighten our tasks as much as possible is truly a lesson to be commended.”