Chapter XX: More Letters

Mrs. Edwin Green, from Mrs. Kent Brown.

NEW YORK, April .., 19...

MOLLY DARLING:

Your letter was good to get. Kent and I had begun
to feel like -in-laws, it had been so long since
you had written. Mother Brown, the usually
faithful chronicler of all the doings and sayings
of the family, had cut us off with a postal. Now
that we know she is "keepin' keer" of little
Mildred, we can understand her silence better.
When Mother Brown does anything, she does it all
over, and I am sure when she is doing such a thing
as attend to anything so precious as her beloved
grandchild she has no time for mere letter
writing.

Kent and I were greatly interested in what you had
to tell us of the charming Virginians you have met
in Charleston. It was almost uncanny, in a way, to
hear from you of these people, as we had just been
hearing of them from a very nice young man with
whom Kent has struck up an acquaintance at the Y.
M. C. A. gym, where Kent goes regularly to keep
from getting flabby. The young man's name is
Reginald Kent. It was the name Kent that they had
in common (one in front and one behind) that first
brought them together. They were always getting
mixed up on account of it, my Kent answering when
the other Kent was called, and vice versa.

This young Mr. Kent is an illustrator and
advertising artist. He really is very clever and
very wide-awake. He was dining with us at the very
time that your letter was brought to me, on the
last mail. I had to open it and read part of it
aloud. He had just been telling us of some cousins
named Winn he visits in the country in Virginia,
and of some Richmond girls whom he has met staying
with Page Allison, and these girls are no other
than your Tucker twins. He says the first time he
met them he went on a deer hunt and that Miss Dum
Tucker actually shot a deer. I was slightly
incredulous, he thought, and to prove his story he
took out of his pocketbook two kodak pictures, one
of a very handsome, spirited-looking girl with her
hair coming down and a rifle raised to her
shoulder, and the other a fallen buck with a young
girl kneeling beside him, her arms around his neck
and her face buried on his shoulder. That one, he
said, was Miss Dee, who wept buckets over the
death of the buck, but managed afterward to
partake of some of the venison.

I have an idea Mr. Reginald Kent thinks that Miss
Dum Tucker is about the most attractive person he
ever met. He is certainly very attractive himself,
singularly wholesome and clean in appearance and
mind. He seemed very happy at the prospect of this
paragon of a girl's coming to New York to study. I
will be very glad to be of any use to your friends
I can, and if they do decide to come I will find
board for them and mother them, too, if they need
it. I know you are grinning at the idea of my
mothering anything--I, the harum-scarum, the
flibberty-jibberty--but I am really very much
settled down. I am so steady and good that Kent is
afraid I am sick.

Caroline is doing the work very well for us. I am
the envy of all the people we know because I can
boast a really, truly Kentucky Bluegrass cook. She
is awfully funny about New York, but I think is
beginning to like it very well. Gas scared her
nearly to death for a few days. She seemed to
think there was some kind of magic in it, and I
had to light the stove for her a million times a
day. I found she was just keeping it burning all
the time to save matches, and when I told her to
turn it out if she wasn't using it, she almost
cried, because, it seems, she was afraid of the
pop it gave when she lit it. Then she began
calling on me every time she wanted to light it,
but after a week or so of such humoring she has
learned to do it herself, and now everything is
going along swimmingly. I find she is saving the
burnt matches, though, to make some kind of
bracket with--something she saw back in
"Kaintucky."

I think the greatest shock she ever had was when
she found out that in New York you had to pay for
onions. "I nebber hearn tell of no sich a place.
If'n you ain't made out ter grow none yo'se'f,
looks ter me lak some er yo' neighbors mought be
ginerous enough to gib yer a han'ful fer
seasonin', not fer fryin' or b'ilin'. I wouldn'
spec a whole mess er onions as a gif'--but it do
seem a shame ter hab ter buy a dash er seasonin'."

She almost got her head knocked off with the
dumb-waiter the other day. She thought it was
down, and it was up, and she put her head in the
shaft to watch for it, all the time giving the
most vigorous pulling to the rope. The dumb-waiter
descended with great force and hit her squarely on
the top of the head. I heard a great bump and flew
to the kitchen. "Caroline! Caroline! What is the
matter?" I cried. "'Tain't nothin' much, Miss
Judy, but it mought 'a' been. That there
deaf-and-dumb dining-room servant done biffed me a
lick that pretty near knocked a hole in his flo'."
"Did it hurt very badly?" "No'm, it didn't ter say
hurt none. It jes' dizzified me a leetle. You see,
Miss Judy, it jes' hit me on the haid."

Just on the head!

I think Caroline is almost as much afraid of Aunt
Mary's disapproval now that the old woman is dead
as she was in her lifetime. Whenever she passes
the picture I did of Aunt Mary on the back porch
of Chatsworth shelling peas, she suddenly gets in
a great hurry. She is not as a rule very
energetic, but at the sight of Aunt Mary she gets
a great move on her. She came in the other day
from some jaunt she had been on, it being her
afternoon off, and said: "Looks lak wherever I
goes folks seem to 'vine I'm from de Souf. I ast a
colored gemman how he guessed it an' he said it
was my sof' accident what gimme away. I's goin'
ter try ter speak mo' Yankeefied an' see if'n I
can't pass fer Noo York."

Caroline's first attempt at being Yankeefied was
almost fatal. She made friends with some of the
white maids in the apartment house, some
Scandinavians, and in her endeavor to become New
Yorky she swapped recipes with them, and the next
morning served for breakfast the result: corn
bread with sugar in it! You can picture Kent.

Kent and I are seeing some very pleasant people,
but both of us are working very hard. I work every
morning at the Art Students' League from 9 to 12.
That means I leave the house with Kent. I go to
market on the way to the League and get back to
luncheon. Sometimes he comes in to luncheon, too,
but he is usually too busy. In the afternoon I sew
or read or go shopping or to the matinee, always
something to do in New York, and then we have
dinner at 6:30 and long, delightful evenings
together, usually at home; but sometimes we take
in a show and sometimes we dine at a restaurant.
We have callers in the evening often and also
return calls, but Kent is not much of a caller, as
you know.

We have company to dinner, too, quite often now
that Caroline has found herself. Kent delights in
bringing home unexpected company. He has a notion
he is still living in Kentucky and that this
little two-by-four flat is Chatsworth itself.
Caroline is fortunately accustomed to it, but I am
afraid she will soon become corrupted by these
Scandinavians, who would not put up with it one
moment. Of course I don't mind how many companies
he brings home, and if we are short on rations I
can do like the immortal Mrs. Wiggs and just put a
little more water in the soup. This idiosyncrasy
of my young husband, however, has taught me to
keep a supply of canned soups, asparagus tips,
etc., in the store-room. My friends among the
young married set tell me they market day by day
and never have anything like that on the shelves
as it makes the servants wasteful. Maybe it does,
but I feel quite safe with Caroline and the canned
goods, as she has never yet learned how to use a
can-opener.

Please give the learned professor my best love.
Kent sends his love to you both. This is such a
long letter I am sure it will take two stamps to
send it.

Your ever devoted,
JUDY KEAN BROWN.

Page Allison from Dr. James Allison of Milton, Va.:

BRACKEN, April .., 19...

MY DEAR DAUGHTER:

Mammy Susan and I were very glad to hear from you.
You are a nice girl to write such a fine, long
letter to a mere afterthought. If you write that
splendid a letter to a mere afterthought, what
would you do for a beforethought?

Your new friends sound delightful. I wish I might
know them. The only kick I have about being
nothing but a country doctor is that I meet so few
new people. Of course it is interesting work, and
I am not out of love with it, but sometimes I do
get a weeny, teeny bored with poor Sally Winn's
aches and pains, and wish either she had some new
aches or she could tell about them in a more
scintillating manner. Some new people are moving
into our neighborhood, the Carters. Of course, as
the name indicates, they are not new people except
to our neighborhood. They have taken the old
overseer's cottage on the Grantly estate, leased
it from the two Miss Grants for a year, and are
coming bag and baggage in a few days. I don't know
how many of them there are, but I believe it is
quite a family of girls and one or more boys and a
mother and father, one of them an invalid. More
pink pump water to be concocted by yours truly, I
fancy. I hope they will be agreeable, since no
doubt we will have to see something of them. The
cottage is in miserable repair, and I only hope it
will not tumble down on them. If they are coming
to our county for fresh air, they will get it
there winter and summer, as there are cracks in
the walls as big as those in a corn crib. Pretty
lawn, though, about the prettiest I know of
anywhere, and trees that make me think of
Tennyson's "immemorial elms." I shall not call on
these new neighbors until you come home--that is,
unless I am sent for to come and bring some pink
pump water.

I have had a letter from General Price, Harvie's
grandfather, asking for the pleasure of your
company in the month of July on a house-party he
is giving his grandson. It is such a dignified,
ponderous epistle that I am afraid I shall have to
send to Richmond for the proper stationery with
which to reply. Nothing less than crested vellum
could possibly carry my acceptance. The King of
England could not observe more form were you being
invited to put in two weeks at Windsor. It is very
kind of him, however, to ask my little girl, and I
hope by the aid of the dictionary to express
myself with ease and verbosity in acknowledging
the honor. Of course you want to go?

I shall be pleased to have the volume of Henry
Timrod's poems. I'd like to see the Coogler poems,
too. I enjoyed the extracts immensely. I have
often heard of him and remember reading some
reviews of his stuff when it came out years ago,
before you were born, but I have never seen any
of it. His efforts were so impossible that the
reviewers treated him, one and all, with mock
seriousness, and I believe I have heard he took
them all seriously and thought he was being
praised when they were only poking fun at him. It
is rather pathetic, I think, although of course he
was an awful blockhead.

Mammy Susan was pleased at your account of the
flowers in Charleston, and hopes you can send her
a few clippin's. Her things are doing very well,
and her lemon verbena has grown so that I tell her
we shall have to build a lean-to to keep it in.
She misses you very much and is beginning to count
the days to the middle of May, when I assure her
you will be back with us.

I hope your ankle is behaving itself. You do not
mention it, so I fancy it is. Please remember me
most kindly to all the Tuckers--father and
daughters. I hope you are not bothering Jeffry
Tucker by being with them too much. I think there
is such a thing as the best friend wearing out her
welcome by staying too long. I am sending you a
check for your expenses. You have not divulged
how much your board will be, but if I do not make
the check large enough, please inform me directly.
A sickly winter means a little more money in the
bank in the spring for a country doctor. Thank
goodness, however, the spring seems to be a
healthy one. I'd like to be a Chinese doctor and
be paid only when my patients stay well. Sometimes
it saddens me to feel that my living depends on
disease.

Good-by, my dear little daughter.
FATHER.