Volume II Part 5 (1/2)
Immediately after breakfast, he set out for the barn, ostensibly to ”see to the ch.o.r.es;” really, I believe, to obtain a few moments' respite, before worse evil should come upon him.
Pretty soon Grandma was at the back door calling in firm though persuasive tones:
”Husband! husband! come in, now, and get ready.”
No answer. Then it was in another key, weighty, yet expressive of no weak irritation, that Grandma called ”Come, pa! pa-a! pa-a-a!” Still no answer.
Then that voice of Grandma's sung out like a trumpet, terrible with meaning--”Bijonah Keeler!”
But Grandpa appeared not. Next, I saw Grandma slowly but surely gravitating in the direction of the barn, and soon she returned, bringing with her that ancient delinquent, who looked like a lost sheep indeed and a truly unreconciled one.
”Now the first thing,” said Grandma, looking her forlorn captive over; ”is boots. Go and get on yer meetin' gaiters, pa.”
The old gentleman, having dutifully invested himself, with those sacred relics, came pathetically limping into the room.
”I declare, ma,” said he; ”somehow these things--phew! Somehow they pinch my feet dreadfully. I don't know what it is,--phew! They're dreadful oncomf'table things somehow.”
”Since I've known ye, pa,” solemnly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Grandma Keeler, ”you've never had a pair o' meetin' boots that set easy on yer feet. You'd ought to get boots big enough for ye, pa,” she continued, looking down disapprovingly on the old gentleman's pedal extremities, which resembled two small scows at anchor in black cloth encas.e.m.e.nts: ”and not be so proud as to go to pinchin' yer feet into gaiters a number o' sizes too small for ye.”
”They're number tens, I tell ye!” roared Grandpa nettled outrageously by this cutting taunt.
”Wall, thar', now, pa,” said Grandma, soothingly; ”if I had sech feet as that, I wouldn't go to spreadin' it all over town, if I was you--but it's time we stopped bickerin' now, husband, and got ready for meetin'; so set down and let me wash yer head.”
”I've washed once this mornin'. It's clean enough,” Grandpa protested, but in vain. He was planted in a chair, and Grandma Keeler, with rag and soap and a basin of water, attacked the old gentleman vigorously, much as I have seen cruel mothers wash the faces of their earth-begrimed infants. He only gave expression to such groans as:
”Thar', ma! don't tear my ears to pieces! Come, ma! you've got my eyes so full o' soap now, ma, that I can't see nothin'. Phew, Lordy! ain't ye most through with this, ma?”
Then came the dyeing process, which Grandma Keeler a.s.sured me, aside, made Grandpa ”look like a man o' thirty;” but to me, after it he looked neither old nor young, human nor inhuman, nor like anything that I had ever seen before under the sun.
”There's the lotion, the potion, the dye-er, and the setter,” said Grandma, pointing to four bottles on the table. ”Now whar's the directions, Madeline?”
These having been produced from between the leaves of the family Bible, Madeline read, while Grandma made a vigorous practical application of the various mixtures.
”This admirable lotion”--in soft ecstatic tones Madeline rehea.r.s.ed the flowery language of the recipe--”though not so instantaneously startling in its effect as our inestimable dyer and setter, yet forms a most essential part of the whole process, opening, as it does, the dry and lifeless pores of the scalp, imparting to them new life and beauty, and rendering them more easily susceptible to the applications which follow.
But we must go deeper than this; a tone must be given to the whole system by means of the cleansing and rejuvenating of the very centre of our beings, and, for this purpose, we have prepared our wonderful potion.” Here Grandpa, with a wry face, was made to swallow a spoonful of the mixture. ”Our unparalleled dyer,” Madeline continued, ”restores black hair to a more than original gloss and brilliancy, and gives to the faded golden tress the sunny flashes of youth.” Grandpa was dyed.
”Our world-renowned setter completes and perfects the whole process by adding tone and permanency to the efficacious qualities of the lotion, potion, and dyer, etc.;” while on Grandpa's head the unutterable dye was set.
”Now, read teacher some of the testimonials, daughter,” said Grandma Keeler, whose face was one broad, generous ill.u.s.tration of that rare and peculiar virtue called faith.
So Madeline continued: ”Mrs. Hiram Briggs, of North Dedham, writes: 'I was terribly afflicted with baldness, so that, for months, I was little more than an outcast from society, and an object of pity to my most familiar friends. I tried every remedy in vain. At length I heard of your wonderful restorative. After a week's application, my hair had already begun to grow in what seemed the most miraculous manner. At the end of ten months it had a.s.sumed such length and proportions as to be a most luxurious burden, and where I had before been regarded with pity and aversion, I became the envied and admired of all beholders.'”
”Just think!” said Grandma Keeler, with rapturous sympathy and grat.i.tude, ”how that poor creetur must a' felt!”
”'Orion Spaulding, of Weedsville, Vermont,'” Madeline went on--but, here, I had to beg to be excused, and went to my room to get ready for the Sunday-school.
When I came down again, Grandpa Keeler was seated, completely arrayed in his best clothes, opposite Grandma, who held the big family Bible in her lap, and a Sunday-school question book in one hand.
”Now, pa,” said she; ”what tribe was it in sacred writ that wore bunnits?”
I was compelled to infer from the tone of Grandpa Keeler's answer that his temper had not undergone a mollifying process during my absence.