At Boarding School with the Tucker Twins

CHAPTER XVI.

A VISIT FROM THE TUCKERS

The Tuckers arrived, and Tucker-like, neither at the time nor by the route expected. I was just calling Sam to hitch Peg (short for Pegasus) to the surrey to drive to Milton to meet them, when the unaccustomed toot of an automobile attracted my attention. It was tearing down our avenue at breakneck speed. Dee was at the wheel with Mr. Tucker beside her, and Dum was bouncing around alone on the back seat.

"Beat the train! By Jove, I thought we could!" exclaimed Mr. Tucker, when he spied me at the yard gate. "We were so afraid you might have started for Milton. That's the reason we were violating the speed limit," and they all piled out, the girls hugging me and kissing me and Mr. Tucker almost hugging me and not quite kissing me.

"It was such a grand day we couldn't resist coming in the car," tweedled the twins, "but if you had started for Milton before we got here, we would have died of mortification."

When I told them I had not even had Peg hitched up yet, they were delighted.

"A mounted policeman chased us just as we were leaving Manchester, but we dusted him so Tweedles and I are hoping he did not get our number," said Mr. Tucker.

I called Sam to bring in the grips and rugs.

"I am sorry he can't take your steed around to the stable, Mr. Tucker, but we don't know a thing about automobiles at Bracken."

"Leave it where it is, maybe we can have a spin later on."

We went into the house, where the open wood fires made everything bright and cheerful, although not very warm for persons who are accustomed to steam heat. Mammy Susan in a stiffly starched purple calico dress with a gay bandanna handkerchief on her head was ready to greet the guests.

"Well, bress the Lord, an' you done come all the way from town in that there fire wagon. I hearn the horn a tootin' and a rushin' like mighty wings, and I says, says I: 'Susan Collins, 'tis the Angel Gabr'el a comin' fer you.' So I clap on my clean head hankcher an' a starched apron tow be ready fer the Resrection."

"Mammy Susan, we've heard a lot about you. Page talks about you all the time at school," said the twins, shaking the old woman warmly by the hand.

"Well, now, does she? Mammy's baby don't fergit her any more'n Mammy fergits her baby. An' is this your pa? Well, save us, ef you don't look more like somebody's great-grandson than anybody's pa."

"Well, they do treat me like a stepson, sometimes, Mammy," laughed Mr. Tucker. "If I could only take on the looks of years without the years, I'd be glad, and maybe I could command more respect."

"Why don't you grow some whiskers, then? They ain't nothin' so ageyfying as whiskers on a young man."

"I'll do it, I'll do it!" exclaimed Mr. Tucker.

"Yes, and you do and we'll pull 'em out," Tweedles declared.

"Well, here am I a-gassin' when I ought to be settin' a little lunch fer the travelers."

"Oh, we had lunch on the way," the three of them declared. "We were not going to be any trouble to you by coming so much earlier than we were expected."

"Oh, now, you must be hungry," I said. "It won't take Mammy Susan a minute."

"Cose they's hungry, child. Can't I tell hungry folks soon as I claps eyes on 'em? Maybe they did eat a snack in that there chariot of fire, but the way they come down the abenue was enough to jolt down a Christmus dinner, plum puddin' an' all, an' plum puddin' takes a heap er joltin'," and Mammy Susan hastened out to "set a little lunch," – which the Tuckers later declared was a feast.

They were hungry and cold, in spite of their protestations to the contrary, and cold turkey and country ham with the delicious little cornmeal cakes that Mammy could stir up and bake in half a minute disappeared like magic.

"Such coffee!" and Mr. Tucker rolled up his eyes in ecstasy. "And real cow cream! I tell you, Tweedles, as soon as you finish getting this much needed education, we've got to get out of an apartment and into a house where we can do some real housekeeping and have some home cooking."

"You ought to be made to eat at Gresham for a month or so, Zebedee, and you would think the café is pretty fine," said Dee. "The grub at Gresham is not so bad, but there is such a deadly sameness to it."

"Well, the grub may be tejus," broke in Mammy, who had just come in with a heaped-up plate of corn cakes, "but it must hab suption in it, 'cause lil Miss Page is growd in width as well as wisdom, and you two young twin ladies is got cheeks like wine-saps."

"You are right, Mammy, the food must be pretty good to keep them so fat and rosy," said Mr. Tucker, helping himself plentifully to the dainty little cakes.

"Yassir," and Mammy had a sly twinkle in her kind old eyes, "an' that there caffy whar you gits yo' victuals mus' be dishin' out some nourishment, too, 'cause you ain't to say peaked lookin'."

How we did laugh at Zebedee, and as for him, he got up and gave Mammy a little hug. The Tuckers all knew how to take jokes on themselves.

"She certainly did get you, Zebedee," teased Dum. "You were trying to be so Mr. Tuckerish, too, admonishing Dee and me for complaining about the food at Gresham."

Father came in soon from his rounds and greeted the visitors in his kindly hospitable way. Mr. Tucker was to have several days' holiday from his newspaper and Father said the neighborhood was in an extremely healthy condition, owing to the clear, cold weather, and he did not expect to be overworked; so the gentlemen began immediately to plan their hunts. Dum and Dee were wild at the prospect of going on the deer hunt.

"I saw Jo Winn this morning, daughter," said Father, "and he will go with us. He has a cousin from New York who is visiting him and he wants to take him."

"Well, if the cousin has no more conversation than Jo he certainly will not bore us with his chatter," I said. "Now, how about lunch, Father? We must give Mammy some warning, because she gets flustrated if we come at her too suddenly."

"To-morrow suits Jo and his kinsman, and it will suit us, too, I think. Tell Mammy how many of us there are and tell her to put up twice as much lunch as you think she should. That ought to be 'most enough. We'll want the big camping coffee pot and a skillet and some salt; also some sliced bacon, ground coffee and sugar, and a little flour to roll the rabbits in. We may make a fire and cook some if we get cold and have good luck in the morning."

I went out to the kitchen to interview Mammy, Tweedles following me, and then we had to go see the dogs. Dee approved of them and they heartily approved of her. Dum did not have the passion for them that Dee and I had, but she liked them well enough. The dogs licked her hand respectfully and then jumped up on Dee and knocked her down and had a big romp.

How delightful it was to have some companions of my own age at my beloved Bracken! The Tuckers wanted to see everything and go everywhere. We visited the horses in the stable and the cows in the pen and climbed up in the hay loft to hunt for eggs that a sly old blue hen refused to lay in the proper place.

"It's just like Grandpa Tucker's, only nicer," declared Dum. "Grandpa treats us as though we were about two years old and treats Zebedee as though he had just arrived in his teens, so when we go there, while we have splendid times, we are being told what not to do from morning till night."

"Well, nobody ever has told me not to do things," I said. "Mammy Susan grumbles when she thinks I am too venturesome, but she has always ended by letting me have my own way; and Father says he thinks my way is about as good as anybody's way."

"Well, isn't it funny you are not spoiled?" tweedled the girls.

"I believe I used to be spoiled when I was a tiny thing; but Father says if people grow up spoiled, it is because they lack sense, and he always said he knew I had sense enough to live down the spoiling that he and Mammy Susan just couldn't help giving me."

"I believe Dr. Allison is right, Dee," said Dum very solemnly, "and when we are unruly with Zebedee I know it is not the fault of our early training that we love to lay it on, but just plain lack of sense."

"Well, I'm going to try to be mighty good, then," exclaimed Dee. "If there is anything in the world I hate, it's stupidity."

CHAPTER XVII.

DEER HUNTING

It was a glorious morning. Of course we had to get up before the sun thought of such a thing. Indeed, there was a crazy, old, lop-sided, dissipated-looking, gibbous moon still hanging on to life when we came piling out of the warm, lighted house and climbed into the two vehicles waiting for us. Father and Mr. Tucker were to go in Father's buggy, and the girls and I were very snug, three on the seat of the runabout, with the lunch and coffee pot bouncing around in the back, and the Tuckers' guns carefully stowed under the seat.

Jo Winn joined us at Milton, the New York cousin in the buggy with him. We were curious to see the cousin, whom Father had reported as being "quite likely." Jo was as good as gold and perfectly intelligent with a keen sense of humor, but he was as silent as the tomb. His sister Sally was the greatest chatterbox in the world, I am sure. She simply never stopped talking except on those occasions when she was doing her best to "shuffle off this mortal coil," and then she seemed to be not able to stop talking long enough to die thoroughly. Just when the grave was yawning for her (or maybe because of her) she would think of something she simply had to talk about and come back to life.

The Winns were F. F. V.'s, in that they were among the first families in Virginia, if not of Virginia. They were not aristocrats, certainly. They came of good pioneer stock who were tillers of the soil in the seventeenth century and still were in the twentieth. They had lived on the same tract of land for two centuries and a half, and in America that should stand for aristocracy, but somehow with the Winns it never had. They had no desire to be considered great folk and so they never were. The war between the states had left them as it had found them, in fairly prosperous circumstances. Never having owned slaves, the emancipation of the negroes did not affect them one way or the other. Having always done their own sowing and reaping, they could still do it. The family had never been much on marrying, and now there were none left but the hypochondriacal old maid Sally and her younger brother Jo.

I had given the twins a history of the Winns as we spun over to Milton. Pegasus was in fine feather, which seems a strange thing to say of a horse, but of one whose name suggests wings, perhaps it is appropriate.

"I fancy Jo is so silent because Sally talks so much," suggested Dum.

"Maybe it is the other way and Sally talks so much to make up for Jo's silence," I said; "but I hope the cousin from New York will strike a happy medium."

"A 'cousin from New York' always sounds so exciting and just as like as not he'll come from Hoboken. Dr. Allison says he is about twenty-five, so I reckon he'll not notice us kids, anyhow. It won't break our hearts, that's sure," and Dee tossed her blue-black head in disdain of all males.

Jo and the cousin were waiting for us at the crossroads. The cousin was a good-looking young man with blue eyes and light hair, very picturesque in a brand new hunting suit, leggins and all.

"They won't stay new long," I whispered to the girls, "with Jo's hounds flopping all over them."

Jo was forced to open his mouth and speak, as it was up to him to introduce the cousin, but he did it in as few words as possible.

"Mr. Kent – Miss Allison." And then an appealing glance at me gave me to understand that the matter was in my hands, so I took up the social burden and introduced Jo and Mr. Kent to the Tuckers. Mr. Reginald Kent, – that was the picturesque name that went with the picturesque corduroy suit, – proved himself to be a young man of resources. He had no idea of taking the long drive to the spot of the possible deer alone with the silent Jo, the hounds wallowing all over his new clothes.

"See here," he exclaimed, "I think one of us fellows ought to get in with the young ladies. They might need some protection on the trip." Jo looked very much amused at my needing protection and the twins certainly looked buxom enough to take care of themselves without the help of Mr. Reginald Kent.

"Well, sort yourselves in a hurry," called Father. "The colt won't stand another minute and I don't want to get too far ahead of the rest of you."

"Let me get in with Mr. Winn," begged Dee. "I'm crazy to ride with the dogs." Jo's dogs were the only ones going, although the pack at Bracken plead piteously to be allowed to join the party. It seemed best not to take too many, and Jo's dogs were so well trained that the men had decided on them.

Mr. Reginald Kent squeezed his new corduroys between Dum and me, and Dee jumped into the buggy with the grinning Jo. Dee declared later that Jo talked as much as most men and was a very agreeable person; but I fancy the real truth of the matter was that Dee chattered away at her usual rate, and that Jo was such an eloquent listener Dee never did discover that she was doing all the talking. Certainly they found a topic of interest to both of them in the dogs, and as talking about the dogs meant patting the dogs, the dogs naturally were pleased.

Our cavalier proved to be very cheerful and very complimentary. He was evidently much pleased to escape the silent Jo. We liked him in spite of his fulsome compliments, and when we gave him to understand that flattery was not the way to curry favor with us, he became more natural and we had a very amusing time with him. It turned out that he did not live in Hoboken as Dee had predicted, but in the heart of New York City. He was employed by an advertising firm, not only as a writer of advertisements, but also as illustrator.

"Of course there is no pleasant way of making a living," he said, "but I long to get out of this commercial art and into regular illustrating."

"But I adore ads," exclaimed Dum. "Dee and Zebedee and I always read every word of them and Zebedee says you can find more pure fiction in them than in the magazine proper – or improper."

"Well, after this I shall do my work more enthusiastically and more conscientiously, knowing there is a chance of its coming under such eyes," and Mr. Kent's glance of admiration into Dum's hazel eyes gave her to understand he was speaking of those particular eyes and not Dee's and Zebedee's. I rather expected to see Dum give him a back-hander, but instead she blushed in rather a pleased way, just as any young girl should on receiving such a compliment from a handsome young man from New York.

The roads in our county are much improved, thanks to the automobilists who have worked such reforms throughout the whole country. On that morning they were hard and dry, even dusty, and we went spinning along through the frosty air, Father ahead with the colt behaving as though it were a hurry call and every moment counted. I was next in line and Peg was giving me all I could do to hold her in. She seemed to want to let us all see that an upstartish colt could trot no faster than she could. I was rather glad that Mr. Reginald Kent had taken a fancy to hazel eyes instead of gray, as I needed my gray eyes to pick a smooth road for Peg. Jo Winn and Dee were just far enough behind us to keep out of our dust, and occasionally we could hear Dee's ringing laugh and an unusual guffaw from the silent Jo.

"You see now why we couldn't come in your automobile, as Mr. Tucker wanted," I said to Dum, as Father wheeled the colt sharply to the left into a forest of pines where scrub oaks and chinquepins almost concealed a very poor excuse for a road.

"Come on, Daughter," Father called back to me; "we'll keep close together through the woods, as there is no dust."

I really believe that the road through that pine forest is the very worst road in Virginia, and that is saying a good deal, as my beloved state has only recently awakened to the fact that it reflects on her standing to be noted as having the worst roads in the Union. That particular road had great granite bowlders; ruts that threatened to swallow us; gnarled tree roots that stretched across the path as though they meant to trip us up; and sometimes even a fallen trunk over which we would have to bounce, testing the springs of our vehicles to their utmost endurance.

"Well, I reckon little Henry Ford" (that is what the Tuckers called their car), "would have been ditched long before this," gasped Dum, as one wheel took a bowlder and the other a deep rut.

"Miss Allison, I haven't asked you to let me assist you in driving, just because I know you can do it so much better than I can," said Mr. Kent. "I'd have turned over there as sure as I'm born."

"Well, I came mighty near doing it," I laughed. "If Dum's hat had not been on the side and tilted toward the bowlder, we would have landed in the ditch, I know. We had just about an ounce's weight in our favor."

"I guess it's a good thing I part my hair in the middle in these hairbreadth escapes. Just think, suppose it had been parted on the left side and had counterbalanced Miss Dum's hat tipped toward the right! Over we would have gone."

Just then a Molly Cotton-tail jumped up out of the bracken and the dogs set up a fearful howling. It was all Jo Winn and Dee could do to hold them in their places. Mr. Tucker and Dum looked longingly at their guns but the colt would not stand for shooting going on so close to him, and, besides, when people go out for deer they do not want to begin on rabbits. So little Miss Molly got off for that time at least.

I was glad. There is something in my make-up that recoils from killing anything. To be sure, I am fond of a rabbit's hind leg, about as good eating as one can find, but when I am picking on one of those hind legs I have to close my mind carefully to the fact that that same hind leg has helped to carry some Bre'r Rabbit through many a briar patch. If the image comes to me of a perky little white tail scurrying through the bushes with the eager dogs in pursuit, I simply have to give up eating the delectable morsel and Mammy Susan has to broil me some bacon.

"Hi, there, Uncle Peter," called Father to an old negro man approaching on a mule, a great sack of corn balanced on his pommel, "don't tell me you are not at home when we are coming to see you."

"Well, Docallison, I done tech bottom in de meal bag dis very mawnin', an' I was jes' a takin' some cawn to de mill; but efn de quality folks is a comin' ter see me, I kin sho make out wif de scrapin's till anudder day."

"We are going to try our luck with the deer, Uncle Peter, and I thought we would leave our teams at your cabin and get you to bring our provisions over to Falling Water in your wheelbarrow."

"'Visions, you say? Well, efn you's goin' ter have 'visions, dey ain't no us'n my goin' ter de mill fer days ter come. 'Visions from Bracken means dat Mammy Susan done had her say-so, and dat ole nigger 'oman is sho a amplified perfider. They'll be 'nuf leavins ter feed de multitude on Mount Aryrat." And Uncle Peter turned his willing mule's head around and led the way to his cabin.

Click! Click! went Mr. Kent's pocket camera. "Exactly the type I am looking for! Now, Miss Dum, when you look through the advertisements several months from now, be sure to notice a certain molasses that is to be put on the market. Uncle Peter will be there taking his corn to the mill so he can have a 'pone to sop in de 'lasses.' Oh, look at the cabin! Isn't it charming?"

It was indeed a typical log cabin. It was old, very old, but Uncle Peter kept it in good repair, patching the mortar in the chinks from time to time and propping up the great stone chimney that stood at about the angle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. On the door and walls were tacked many coon skins. That is the method employed for curing the skins, and Uncle Peter made quite a little money selling coon skins. He had only a small clearing around his cabin but a good cornfield down in the creek bottom.

"'Light, 'light," said Uncle Peter, "Rosana will be that proud ter 'ceive you. She been throwing rocks all mornin' at that ole Shanghai rooster who would crow fer comp'ny. Co'se Rosana didn't know de comp'ny was a goin' ter be white folks. She done' low it would be some er dem low-down niggers tother side er de swamp what is always a-comin' empty and gwine away full."

Aunt Rosana squeezed herself sideways through the cabin door. She was a mountain of flesh, with about as much shape as a football. Indeed, she looked very like the potato babies Mammy Susan used to make me: a big potato for the body; a little potato for a head, stuck on with a match; feet and arms of peanuts; and a face scratched on with a kitchen fork. Her voice sounded like hot mashed potato as she bade us welcome.

"Well, efn I won't hab ter gib dat ole Shanghai rooster a extry handful er wheat! Here I been a-was'in' time all mornin' tryin' ter make him shet up his 'nostigatin' fer comp'ny, not thinkin' he was a-crowin' fer quality. I mought a-knowed he wouldn't er crowed so loud an' clear fer nuthin' but niggers, an' swamp niggers, at dat," and a laugh shook her huge body, reminding me of the "bowl full of jelly."

We were glad to stretch ourselves after the long drive, and Aunt Rosana took us into her cabin while the men of the party attended to unhitching the horses. The cabin was spotless, although the one room it boasted was kitchen, parlor and bedroom in one. A great fireplace almost the entire length of one side of the room was really the kitchen. Aunt Rosana scorned iron stoves and still did her cooking with pot-hooks and Dutch ovens. Even now, hanging from one hook, was a singing black iron kettle and from another a covered pot from which issued an aroma that told me that Uncle Peter was going to have cabbage for dinner. Homemade rag rugs covered the floor almost entirely, but wherever a spot of oak flooring showed, it was gleaming white with much scrubbing.

A great four-poster had the place of honor opposite the fireplace. It was a bed fit for the slumbers of kings and princes. Many families in Virginia will exhibit just such beds and proudly tell you that in those beds Lafayette and Washington had slept. I don't know how Uncle Peter and Aunt Rosana happened to have it, but I know that the beautiful old bed had never harbored a more worthy couple. The patchwork quilt, with its intricate rising-sun pattern, was Aunt Rosana's handiwork. The walls were decorated with brilliant chromos, calendars dating back into the 'seventies and on up to date.

The twins were charmed with the place and their interest was most flattering to Aunt Rosana. She showed them all her treasures, even her photograph album.

"And who are all of these people?" asked Dum, who was politely looking at every photograph.

"Lor', chile, I dunno. Peter bought dat ere album at a sale ober in de nex' county. Ev'ybody in de book is white, an' dey looks like quality ter me; but dese days yer can't tell. Some er de quality is lookin' moughty stringy an' de oberseer class is pickin' up so dey is kinder mergin' inter great folks."

"What's this up your chimney?" queried Dee, peering up the great flue.

"Oh, dat's whar I smokes my meat. They's some shoulders up dar; an' some sides er baking wif a streak er fat an' a streak er lean as pretty as any you kin buy in de city. An' them's my little chany valuebowles what I been collecking of sence I was a baby," said Aunt Rosana to Dum, who was examining a great array of little china ornaments on top of a large old highboy.

There were little china girls kissing little china boys; little baskets with turtle doves on the handles; pink puppies and green cats, some of them meant for match safes and some of them purely ornamental; little cups and saucers of every shape and hue; little pitchers with big ears and some with no ears at all. I have never been in a cabin of self-respecting colored people where there was not a chest of drawers or a table filled with similar treasures. I know Aunt Rosana thought as much of her "chany valuebowles" as Father did of his books, and her sensations when Dum almost dropped a little shell-covered box was just what Father's would have been if he had seen a careless reader turn down a page in one of his beloved books, or bend back the covers of one of his first editions.