CHAPTER IX
VALENTINES AT MONDREER
It was the fourteenth of February, St. Valentine’s Feast and All Birds’ Wedding Day!
It was a bright morning, with a sunny blue sky, and a soft breeze giving a foretaste of early spring.
Miss Sibby Bayard had come by special invitation to dine, and take tea with the housekeeper at Mondreer.
The two ladies were seated in Mrs. Force’s favorite sitting room, whose front window looked east upon the bay, and whose side window looked north into the woods.
A bright, open wood fire was burning in the wide fireplace, at which they sat in two rocking-chairs with their feet upon the brass fender.
Mrs. Anglesea had the edge of her skirt drawn up as usual, for, as she often declared, she would rather toast her shins before the fire than eat when she was hungry, or sleep when she was sleepy.
Miss Sibby was knitting one of a pair of white lamb’s-wool socks for her dear Roland.
Mrs. Anglesea was letting out the side seams of her Sunday basque.
“It is the most aggravating thing in this world that I seem to be always a-letting out of seams, and yet always a-having my gown bodies split somewhere or other when I put them on!” said the widow, apropos of her work, as she laid the open seam over her knee and began smoothing it out with her chubby fingers.
“You’re gettin’ too fat, that’s where it is. You’re gettin’ a great deal too fat,” remarked plain-spoken Miss Sibby.
“Well! That’s just what I’m complaining of! I’m getting so fat that the people make fun of me behind my back; they’d better not try it on before my face, I can tell them that!”
“How do you know they make fun of you at all?”
“By instick! I know it. And besides, this very morning, when Jake came from the post office, what did he fetch me? Not the letter from the old ’oman, as I was a-hoping and a-praying for! No! but a big onwelope with a impident walentine in it!”
“A walentine!”
“Yes, ma’am! A most impident one! A woman—no—a haystack dressed up like me, with impident verses under it! I wish I knowed who sent it! I’d give ’em walentines and haystacks, too, for their impidence.”
“Oh, don’t yer mind that! It was some boys or other! Boys is the devil, sez I, and you need never to expect nothing better from them, sez I! You can’t get blood out’n a turnip, sez I! nor likewise make a silk purse out’n a sow’s ear, sez I, and no more can’t you expect nothing out’n boys but the devil. Why, la! I got a wuss walentine than yourn! Found it tucked underneath of the front door this morning. Jest look at it!” said Miss Sibby, drawing a folded paper out of her pocket, opening and displaying it to her companion.
“See here,” she continued, pointing out its features as she spread it on her knee. “Here a tower, with a man on the top of it and a crown on the head of him, and his arms stretched out just as he has chucked an old ’oman over the wall! And here’s the old ’oman halfway down to the ground with her hands and feet flying. And onderneath of it all is wrote, ‘Descended from a duke.’ That’s meant for me, you know! It’s a harpoon on me and the Duke of England! But I don’t mind it! Not I! It’s nothing but their envy, sez I. The birds will pick at the highest fruit, sez I!”
“I think they ought to be well thrashed! Wish I had hold of ’em!”
“Lemme see yourn!” said Miss Sibby.
Mrs. Anglesea stood up and took a folded paper from under one of the silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece and handed it to her visitor.
A haystack, dressed in Mrs. Anglesea’s style and crowned with her head, and not a very violent caricature of her face. Evidently, like Miss Sibby’s valentine, the work of some waggish amateur.
“It’s the truth of the thing that gets me. I am getting to be a haystack,” said Mrs. Anglesea.
“Well, what do you do it for?” inquired Miss Sibby.
“How can I help it?” demanded her companion.
“Reggerlate your habits. Do by yourself as you do by the animyles, sez I!”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Well, I’ll try to ’splain. When we want to fatten fowl, we shut ’em up in coops so they can’t move round much; and we feed ’em full, don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“And when we want to fatten pigs, we shut ’em up in pens so they can’t run round much, and we feed ’em full, don’t we?”
“Yes! But what of that?”
“Well, them innicent fowls and quadruples are our kinfolks in the flesh, if they ain’t in the spirit anyways, and what’s law to them is law to us.”
“You’re too deep for me, ole ’oman!”
“Well, then, to come to the p’int——”
“Yes, down to hard pan.”
“If you want to get fatter and fatter, till you can’t pass through ne’er a door in this house, you keep eating as much as you can, and sitting into rocking-chairs as long as possible!”
“Oh, Lord!”
“And you’ll keep on a-getting fatter and fatter, until—until you’d do to go round the country in a show.”
“Oh, Lord! Next time I see young Dr. Ingle I’ll ask him wot sort o’ vittels produces fat and wot’ll make only skin and bone and muscle,” said the widow, in dismay.
“Yes, I reckon you’d better do that! It’s getting dangerous in your case, you know! As for me, I am fat enough; but never too fat. I always wariate betwixt a hund’ed and twenty-five to a hund’ed and thirty. But I never go beyond a hund’ed and thirty. Moderation is a jewel, sez I! Lord! here’s somebody a-coming! Who is it, I wonder?” exclaimed Miss Sibby, breaking off in her discourse and going to the front window. “Why, it’s Tommy Grandiere! And he and Jake a-bringin’ in of a big box!” she continued, as the “carryall” stopped before the door, and the farmer and the servant lifted down a box.
“It’s new curtains, or rugs, or something for the house. They’re alluss a-coming,” observed Mrs. Anglesea.
As she spoke the door opened, and Jake’s head appeared, while Jake’s voice said:
“’Ere’s Marse Tom Grander, mum.”
Mr. Grandiere entered the room.
“Good-day, Mrs. Anglesea! Miss Sibby, glad to see you! I was up at Charlotte’s Hall this morning, and saw a box at the express office for you. As I was coming down this way, and thought maybe it would be a convenience to you for me to fetch it along, I just gave a receipt for it and fetched it. So here it is in the hall.”
“I thank you, sir, which it is a convenience! Not knowing as there was a box there for me, I might have left it for a week. Thanky’, sir! Won’t you sit down?” inquired Mrs. Anglesea, placing a chair for the newcomer.
“No, I thank you, ma’am. I have to go. But I would like to ask: Have you heard from Mr. and Mrs. Force lately?”
“Not for ’most a fortnight. But they are coming down in June.”
“In June? Yes, so I heard. Good-morning, Mrs. Anglesea. Good-morning, Miss Sibby.”
And the visitor hurried away.
“What’s in that box, do you think?” inquired Miss Sibby.
“Oh, curtains, or stair carpet, or rugs, or something for the house! They are allus a-coming! Only I ’most in general get a letter first to tell me where to send for them,” said Mrs. Anglesea.
“I would like to see the pattern o’ them rugs and curtains and things! Fashions do change so much, I would ralely like to see what the present fashion is! Ef you don’t keep up with the times, sez I, the times will leave you behind, sez I!”
“Well, we’ll open the box after dinner, Miss Sibby, but we can’t before. Dinner is ready to go on the table now, and it mustn’t be spoiled by keeping. It’s spring lamb and spinach, raised under glass——”
“Spring lamb and spinach the fourteenth of February! Never!” exclaimed the descendant of the Howards.
“Yes, but it is. Having the conveniences to do it with, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have the luxuries. Having the hotbeds, why not the spinach? That’s what I say to Jake and to Luce. And let me tell you them niggers live just as well as I do.”
“Lamb and spinach!” gasped Miss Sibby.
“And that ain’t all. Fresh fish, caught in the bay this morning, to begin with. And meringo pudding to finish off with. And a good bottle of wine to go all the way through with it. It isn’t often as I meddle with the wine cellar, though the ole man and ’oman did tell me to help myself—give me carte wheel, as they called it, to do as I please with what’s left in the vault. Most of it, to be sure, was took to Washington. Still I never makes free with the wine, ‘cept on high days and holidays. And there’s the bell, so now we’ll go in to dinner.”