CHAPTER II.—MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.
They turned into an avenue through a gate opened from the wagon by means of a rope pulled by the driver.
“How is that for a gate, Molly? I began my holiday by getting the thing in order. It works beautifully now, but the least bit of rough handling gets it off its trolley.”
“It is fine, Kent. But tell me, are you to have your holiday now?”
“Yes; you see I can help with the harvesting this week, and next week the wedding bells have to be rung. And I thought any spare time I have I could take Miss Judy off your hands.”
“I am afraid that your holiday will be a very busy one,” laughed Judy; “but maybe I can help ring the wedding bells, and, if I can’t do much toward harvesting, I can at least carry water to the thirsty laborers.”
Kent Brown was in an architect’s office in Louisville, working very hard to master his profession, for which he had a fondness amounting to a passion. Mrs. Brown had secretly hoped that one of her boys would want to become a farmer, but they one and all looked upon Chatsworth as a beloved home, but not a place to make a living. Their earnest endeavor, however, was to keep up the place, and often their hard-earned and harder-saved earnings went toward much needed repairs or farm machinery. Mrs. Brown had to confess that a little ready money earned irrespective of the farm was very acceptable; and, since her four boys were on their feet and beginning to walk alone, and stretch out willing, helpful hands to her, she found life much easier.
Not that money or the lack of money had much to do with Mrs. Brown’s happiness. She was a woman of strong character and deep feelings, with a love for her children that her sister, Mrs. Clay, said was like that of a lioness for her cubs. But that remark was called forth when Mrs. Clay, Sister Sarah, one morning found Mrs. Brown making two pairs of new stockings out of four pairs of old ones, after a pattern clipped from the woman’s page of a newspaper. With her accustomed bluntness, she had said: “Well, Mildred Carmichael, if you had only three and a half children, instead of seven, you would not have to be guilty of such absurd makeshifts.”
Mrs. Brown had risen up in her wrath and given her such a talk that, although ten years had elapsed since that memorable morning, Sister Sarah still avoided the subject of stockings with Sister Mildred.
Mrs. Brown was a great reader, and loved old books and old poetry. One of Molly’s earliest remembrances was lying on the otter-skin rug in front of the great open fire, with brothers and sisters curled up by her or seated close to the big brass fender, while mother read Dickens aloud, or the Idyls of the King, or something else equally delightful. One by one the younger children would drop to sleep; and then Mammy would come and do what she called “walk ’em to baid,” muttering to herself, “I hope to Gawd that these chilluns won’t be a dreamin’ all night about that stuff Miss Mildred done packed in they haids.”