We had come out into the kitchen after supper, Estelle and Alice Yorke and I, for Hiram Nute had come up on his semi-annual visit, and we had not quite outgrown our childish delight in inspecting his wares. Always at Thanksgiving Loveday permitted him to accept grandma’s standing invitation to pay a visit to the farm. There was a regular ceremony attending these visits, arranged, I am sure, by Loveday.
He presented grandma with a bottle of essense of peppermint, one of us girls with a bottle of perfumery of his own manufacture—selection of the receiver presumably made by Loveday,—and Cyrus with a bottle of bear’s oil for the hair. This latter presentation must have been, we thought, a concession made by Loveday to his own weakness, for she well knew that Cyrus’ whole soul revolted from hair oil. I was convinced of Cyrus’ growth in grace when I saw him receive this tribute amiably and only surreptitiously present it to Leander Green.
Another inevitable ceremony attending the Thanksgiving visit was Hiram’s tuning of the old parlor organ, which had been relegated to the hall as long ago as when mother’s piano had come into the parlor. Cyrus played on it, sometimes, by ear, and we used it when the choir rehearsed at our house; and Loveday felt a comfortable pride in having Hiram keep it in good order. Hiram was a Jack-of-all-trades. He called it having “a talent for combernations.”
“This trade or that may fail ye, but get ye a good combernation and there ye be,” Hiram was continually saying.
The hair was growing sparse and gray on Hiram’s long, narrow head in these days, and his Adam’s apple was more prominent, but otherwise he was the Hiram of our childhood and I for one had never ceased to hail his coming with delight.
The bottle of perfumery had been presented to Octavia this year. Loveday insisted upon strict impartiality, although Octavia was known to be of the opinion that the best of all smells is no smell. And Cyrus—Cyrus, who never condescended to linger in the kitchen—had come out ostensibly to receive his bear’s oil, really as I believed, because Alice Yorke was there.
He was actually making a little joke about the hair oil—Cyrus, who in all his twenty-eight years had scarcely been known to make a joke—and his dark, ascetic face was all alight as his eyes rested on Alice Yorke, when the door opened suddenly and Dave stood there in the suit of glittering mail that seemed to make his face so white.
Cyrus’ face darkened like a thunder-cloud, but he had to seem to share in the delight that we all showed. Every one ought to be at home Thanksgiving eve, and Dave was such a dear, lovable fellow, even if we older ones had never quite rid ourselves of the feeling that he was not one of us and that we didn’t quite understand him. We assailed him with a confused chorus of questions. How had he happened to come, after all? Was Rob better? And why did he not come, too? And why had he not let us know he was coming, that we might meet him at the station?
He was embarrassed and reticent, but then Dave was always provokingly reserved at times. It remained uncertain whether Rob was better or not, and why he didn’t come, too. But then Rob’s illness was always a painful subject to Dave; it was a Damon and Pythias affair with those two, an affection that had grown with their growth and strengthened with their strength.
When Uncle Horace had persisted in his determination to send Rob away to school, somewhat against his will, having apparently changed his mind about the advantages of a college education and being certainly ambitious for Rob, as he had never been for himself, we knew that he depended upon Dave to take care of him. He never admitted this, for he was sensitive about Rob’s delicacy of constitution and as severe and exacting with him as if he were strong.