The Dew of Their Youth

by S. R. Crockett

“I have not time to be arguing with the likes of you!” she would cry. And upon the word a sound cuff removed us out of her path, and before we had stopped tingling Mary Lyon had plunged into the next object in hand, satisfied that she had successfully wrestled with at least one problem. But with grandfather it was different. He had to be convinced—if possible, convicted—in any case overborne.

To accomplish this Mary Lyon would put forth all her powers, in spite of her husband’s smiles—or perhaps a good deal because of them. Upon her excellent authority, he was stated to be the most irritating man betwixt the Brigend of Dumfries and the Braes of Glenap.

“Oh, man, say what you have to say,” she would cry, when reduced to extremities by the obvious unfairness of his silent mode of controversy, “but don’t sit there girning like a self-satisfied monkey!”

“Mother!” exclaimed Aunt Jen, horrified. For she cherished a secret tenderness for my grandfather, perhaps because their natures were so different, “How can you speak so to our father?”

“Wait till you get a man of your ain, Janet,” my grandmother would retort, “then you will have new light as to how it is permitted for a woman to speak.”

With this retort Aunt Jen was well acquainted, and had to be thankful that it was carried no further, as it often was in the case of any criticisms as to the management of children. In this case Aunt Jen was usually invited not to meddle, on the forcible plea that what a score of old maids knew about rearing a family could be put into a nutshell without risk of overcrowding.

The room at Heathknowes that was got ready for the children was the one off the parlour—“down-the-house,” as it was called. Here was a little bed for Miss Irma, her washstand, a chest of drawers, a brush and comb which Aunt Jen had “found,” producing them from under her apron with an exceedingly guilty air, while continuing to brush the floor with an air of protest against the whole proceeding.

From the school-house my father sent a hanging bookcase—at least the thing was done upon my suggestion. Agnes Anne carried it and Uncle Ebie nailed it up. At any rate, it was got into place among us. The cot of the child Louis had been arranged in the parlour itself, but at the first glance Miss Irma turned pale, and I saw it would not do.

“I have always been accustomed to have him with me,” she said; “it is very kind of you to give us such nice rooms—but—would you mind letting him sleep where I can see him?”

It was Aunt Jen who did the moving without a word, and that, too, with the severe lines of disapproval very nearly completely ruled off her face. It was, in fact, better that they should be together. For while the parlour looked by two small-paned windows across the wide courtyard, the single casement of the little bedroom opened on the orchard corner which my grandfather had planted in the first years of his taking possession.