Part 9 (1/2)
”Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know that you was coming? and I'd have tidied up the place and organized a few dried-apple pies.”
”Good house-keepers don't wait for company to come before they get to their work,” rebukefully commented the fat lady.
Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill grace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the towel that one was tempted to look twice to a.s.sure himself that they were not the fruits of the sculptor's chisel.
”Where's your wife?” sternly demanded the fat lady.
”Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole lot over to Ervay. She packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago, p'inting that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none if she got a chance to go cycloning round a dance.”
In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they were _de trop_, continued to doze.
”Come, girls, get up,” coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. ”Maude, I don't know when I see you so lazy. Run on, honey-run on with Ethel.” For Ethel, the piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.
Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogs happened to have such unusual names.
”To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife. When I finds myself a discard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going to inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner-to which end-viz., namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my wife that they're named after lady friends in the East. Them lady friends might be the daughters of Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever happened, but they answers the purpose of riling her same as if they were eating their three squares daily. I have hopes, everything else failing, that she may yet quit dancing and settle down to the sanct.i.ty of the home out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs.”
”I can just tell you this,” interrupted the fat lady: ”I don't enjoy occupying premises after hawgs, no matter how fas.h.i.+onable you name 'em. A hawg's a hawg, with manners according, if it's named after the President of the United States or the King of England.”
”That's just what I used to think, marm, of all critters before I enjoyed that degree of friendliness that I'm now proud to own. Take Jerry now, that old white horse-why, me and him is just like brothers. When I have to leave the kid to his lonesome infant reflections and go off to chop wood, I just call Jerry in, and he a.s.soomes the responsibility of nurse like he was going to draw wages for it.”
”I reckon there's faults on both sides,” said the fat lady, impartially.
”No natural woman would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she went off dancing. And no natural man would fill his house full of critters, and them with highfalutin names. Take my advice, turn 'em out.”
Mary did not wait to hear the continuation of the fat lady's advice. She went out on the desert to have one last look at the west. The sun had taken his plunge for the night, leaving his royal raiment of crimson and gold strewn above the mountain-tops.
Her sunset reflections were presently interrupted by the fat lady, who proposed that they should walk till Mr. Dax had tidied up his house, observing, with logic, that it did not devolve on them to clean the place, since they were paying for supper and lodging. They had gone but a little way when sudden apprehension caused the fat lady to grasp Mary's arm. Miss Carmichael turned, expecting mountain-lions, rattlesnakes, or stage-robbers, but none of these casualties had come to pa.s.s.
”Land sakes! Here we be parading round the prairie, and I never found out how that man cooked his coffee.”
”What difference does it make, if we can drink it?”
”The ways of men cooks is a sealed book to you, I reckon, or you wouldn't be so unconcerned-'specially in the matter of coffee. All men has got the notion that coffee must be b'iled in a bag, and if they 'ain't got a regular bag real handy, they take what they can get. Oh, I've caught 'em,”
went on the fat lady, darkly, ”b'iling coffee in improvisations that'd turn your stomach.”
”Yes, yes,” Mary hastily agreed, hoping against hope that she wasn't going to be more explicit.
”And they are so cute about it, too; it's next to impossible to catch 'em.
You ask a man if he b'iles his coffee loose or tight, and he'll declare he b'iles it loose, knowing well how suspicious and p.r.o.ne to investigate is the female mind. But you watch your chance and take a look in the coffee-pot, and maybe you'll find-”
”Yes, yes, I've heard-”
”I've seen-”
”Let's hurry,” implored Mary.
”Have you made your coffee yet?” inquired the fat lady.