Part 1 (2/2)
Now at my home, Bracken, you are closer to Mother Earth and not nearly so grand and toploftical.
Standing on the gallery to greet the guests were General Price and his maiden sister Miss Maria, the general tall and stately and Miss Maria short and fat. It was easy for the brother to look aristocratic and dignified, in fact he could not have looked any other way, so deserved no credit; but for the sister to look equally so was a marvel. Her figure reminded me of Mammy Susan's tomato pincus.h.i.+on, a treasure I had been allowed to play with in my childhood. She was quite as round in the back as the front and her waist was like the equator: an imaginary line extending from east to west. Her face was in keeping with her figure, round and fat, but through those rolls of flesh the high born lady looked out. Her voice was very sweet and the hand that she extended to us was as white as snow. She must have been about seventy years old, but thanks to her rotundity there were no wrinkles on her pink and white face. Of course she was dressed in black silk and old lace! How else could she have been clothed?
The general would have served as a model for the make-up of a movie actor in a before-the-war film. The Tuckers and Mary and I decided later on that we felt just like a movie as we went up those grand broad steps with our host and hostess at the top.
The hall carried out our feeling of being on the screen.
”My, what a place to dance!” whispered Dee to me, but General Price heard her and smiled his approval. He was dignified himself but we were thankful he did not expect us to be.
”You shall dance here to your heart's content, my dear. Many a measure has been trod in this hall.”
Dee looked a little depressed at being expected to tread a measure. That sounded rather minuetish to the modern ear. We wondered what he would think of the dances of the day.
Maxton was laid out in the form of a cross with two great wings, one on each side of the hall. The girls were lodged upstairs in one wing, the boys in the other. Downstairs in the boys' wing were the parlors and smoking room and General Price's chamber and office; in the girls', the dining room, breakfast room, sewing room, chamber, linen room, storeroom, Miss Price's chamber and her small sitting room where she directed her household. There was a bas.e.m.e.nt with more storerooms, pantries, a billiard room and a winter kitchen, but in the summer an outside kitchen was used. All of these things we found out later on a tour of inspection with our hostess.
The great hall ran through the house and the back door was exactly like the front. Thanks to the lay of the land, however, there was not quite such a formidable array of steps. It seemed much more homelike in the back than the front. From the rear gallery one stepped into a formal garden, gravel paths, box hedges, labyrinth and all.
”Oh, ain't it great, ain't it great?” cried Mary, dancing up and down the waxed floor of the great bedroom she and I were to occupy. Dum and Dee Tucker were put in the room with the other girl, Jessie Wilc.o.x. If Annie could have come she was to have been with Mary and me.
”I've got no business calling it great, though,” she said as she stopped prancing, ”when Annie can't be here. What are we to do about it, Page Allison?”
”Let's call Tweedles in consultation. They can think up things.”
Tweedles were very glad to come. Miss Wilc.o.x, who had motored over to Maxton several hours ahead of us, had already taken possession of the room and had begun to unpack her many fluffy clothes. Miss Maria had introduced all of us to our fellow visitor and had graciously expressed a desire that we should be good friends. We were willing, but it remained to be seen whether the stranger would meet us half way. She was a beautiful little creature with dark eyes and hair. Evidently she was very dressy or she would not have had to take up two double beds and all the chairs with her clothes. She seemed to have no idea of making room for the Tuckers nor did she make any excuse for spreading herself so promiscuously.
”She needn't think I am going to move them,” said Dum. ”If they aren't off my bed by bedtime, I'll just go to sleep on them. I wish we could come in with you girls.”
”Of course that would never do,” declared Dee. ”We must stay where Miss Price put us.”
”Maybe Miss Wilc.o.x will turn out to be fine,” I suggested, hoping to turn the tide of Dum's disapproval.
”Fine! She's too fine. I wish you could see her fluffy ruffles. But this isn't thinking up something to do about poor little Annie. My, I wish Zebedee could have come!”
We all wished the same thing, but since he couldn't come we felt we must think up something for ourselves.
”He could have talked old Ponsonby Pore into letting Annie come, I just know,” said Dee.
”Maybe we could do the same thing,” I suggested.
”Harvie says nothing will move him.”
”Well, one thing sure, we can go to see Annie and he can't drive us out, not after he has visited us at the beach. He'll just have to be polite to us.”
”Can't she come up in the evening? Surely she must stop keeping store sometimes,” asked Mary.
”Country stores never close. At least the one near us never does. They might miss the sale of a box of matches or a stick of candy. I used to think, when I was a little girl, that I would rather keep a store than do anything in all the world. I talked about it so much that Mammy Susan got right uneasy about me.”
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