Making Over Martha 8

Making Over Martha 8

Mrs. Ronald smiled. "You’re a loyal soul, Martha. But you’ll love the

country better, when you know more about the birds, and the insects, and

the flowers. I’m going to set about directly teaching you. I’m going

to make a naturalist of you, do you know it?"

 

Mrs. Slawson’s smile was large, benign. "Certaintly. I’d like to be a

nateralist. Mrs. Peckett’s goin’ to make a New England housekeeper outa

me, an’ ol’ lady Crewe is tryin’ to turn me into a farmer. If I get all

that’s comin’ to me, it looks as if I’d be goin’ some, before I get

through."

 

"’Old lady Crewe’?"

 

"Why, don’t you remember? That little ol’ party looks like a china

figga you’d get at Macy’s, down in the basement. They have’m leanin’

against tree-stumps, for match-boxes, an’ suchlike. White hair, an’

dressed to beat the band, in looped-up silk, with flowers painted onto

the pattren. Ol’ lady Crewe reminds you of one o’ those. She was ’born

a Stryker,’ they tell me—whatever _that_ is—an’ her folks owned about

all the land in these parts Lord Ronald’s folks didn’t, in the ol’ days.

She’s got no end o’ money, but——" Martha hesitated.

 

"Oh, I recollect now. She’s the one they say is a miser."

 

"Now, I wouldn’t call her that," said Mrs. Slawson slowly. "I kinda

hate to clap a label onto a body. It’s bound to stick to’m, no matter

what. It’s like a bottle. Oncet it’s had POISON marked on it, it’s

under suspicion, an’ you wouldn’t make free with it, no matter how

careful it’s been washed. Ol’ lady Crewe certaintly _is_ savin’, that no

one can deny, an’ I’m sorry for Miss Katherine, but——"

 

Again Mrs. Ronald let her curiosity escape in the repetition of the name

Martha had just mentioned. "Miss Katherine?"

 

"Miss Katherine’s the ol’ lady’s granddaughter, an’ you can take it from

me, you wouldn’t see a han’somer in a day’s travel."

 

"Oh, Martha, Martha!" cried Miss Claire, pretending jealousy, "I’ve got

a rival. I see it! I know it! You don’t like me best any more."

 

Mrs. Slawson laughed. "’Like you best’! Well, I guess you won’t have to

lose no sleep on that account, Miss Claire. But Miss Katherine’s

certaintly good-lookin’, I’ll say that for her. When I come home the

next mornin’, after seein’ her firstoff, Cora says to me, ’What did she

look like? was she anything like Miss Claire?’ An’ I told her: ’Miss

Katherine’s the han’somest appearin’, but Miss Claire is the delicatest.

Miss Claire’s the most refinder-lookin’. An’ that’s God’s truth. Miss

Katherine’s tall. The sorta grand, proud-lookin’,

I-would-n’t-call-the-queen-my-cousin kind. An’ _you_——! Well, you’ll

know how a body feels about _you_, when the blessed lamb comes home in

August, which, believe _me_, the news of it is the joyfulest ever I

heard in my life. You’ll know how a body feels about _you_, by the way

you feel about _it_. Like pertectin’ it, an’ caressin’ it,

an’—an’—keepin’ harm away from the innercent heart of it. If you don’t

believe me, ask Lord Ronald."

 

"’Ask Lord Ronald,’ _what_?"

 

Mrs. Slawson turned composedly to face the master of the house, as if

his appearance in the doorway, just at that precise moment, had been

"according to specifications." "I was tellin’ Miss Claire—beggin’ your

pardon, _Mrs. Ronald_—about ol’ lady Crewe, up-the-road-a-ways."

 

Mr. Ronald disposed of his long person in a cretonne-covered lounging

chair.

 

"Do you know her, Frank?" As Claire spoke she slipped into her

adjoining dressing-room, to arrange her hair and put on a fresh frock.

 

"Why, yes—and no," he replied. "Of course all the neighborhood knows

about Madam Crewe. I used to hear my father talk about her. But she is

rather a formidable little person. She is not to be approached lightly.

I doubt if any one _knows_ her. She was Idea Stryker. An only child.

’Very beautiful,’ the governor said,—’a great match.’ Her father was

exceedingly high and mighty. An English _younger son_, with feudalistic

notions. Nobody over here was good enough for him, except my father,

with whom he was uncommonly friendly. Stryker was difficult, a

choleric, fiery-tongued individual, much disliked in the state, though,

my father always said, he meant well."

 

"Somehow, I ain’t no use for folks that mean well," observed Mrs.

Slawson. "That is, o’ course, I don’t mean I ain’t no use for’m, but I

think they’re kinda nuisances. When you have to explain that a fella

_means well_, you can take it from me, he ain’t makin’ himself very

clear on his own account."

 

Mr. Ronald laughed. "Well, perhaps that’s true. In any event, Squire

Stryker made himself so cordially disliked that when, one day, he and

his bailiff, as he called him, had a big scene, and Ballard, the

bailiff, was turned out, neck and crop, public sympathy was all on his

side, though no one knew anything about the facts in the case. My

father said Squire Stryker spoke of the man as ’scamp’ and rapscallion,’

but, he never really openly accused him of misdemeanor. There was the

scene, and the next day Stryker closed his place, and took himself and

his girl off, to parts unknown. The dismissed bailiff, a handsome,

prepossessing chap, my father said, disappeared, and nothing more was

heard of him. Idea married, and came back Mrs. Crewe. Young Mrs.

Crewe, in those days. ’Ol’ lady Crewe up-the-road-a-ways,’ now."

 

"Well, what do you think of that!" ejaculated Martha. "So that’s the

reason why, when she hears it, the name Ballard’s like a rag to a red

bull! Now, what do you think of that!"

 

"What do you mean?" Mr. Ronald asked.

 

"Why, the ol’ lady was took sick suddently a few weeks ago, an’ Sam, he

couldn’t get Dr. Driggs, who was out at the time, an’, besides, wasn’t

achin’ to go to the poor ol’ body, anyhow, to have his head snapped off,

an’ then haggle over the bill, into the bargain. So he took the best he

could get, meanin’ Sam did, which was Dr. Ballard, a fine young fella

from Boston. The minute the ol’ lady clapped eye to’m, an’ heard his

name, she up an’ had a kinda Dutch fit. Wouldn’t see’m. It was all I

could do, what with talkin’ an’ contrivin’, to make her, an’ _then_ she

set about layin’ down the law to Miss Katherine, forbiddin’ her parley

with’m, or see’m at all, which is as good as sayin’, ’Bless you, my

childern!’ over their married heads, if she but knew it!"

 

Frank Ronald laughed. "The wisdom of Socrates! I tell you what it is,

Martha, we’ll make a philosopher of you, yet!"

 

"Anything you like, sir. Sever’l has lately mentioned wantin’ to make

things outa me. The more the merrier. An’ if, in the end, I ain’t good

for nothin’ else, maybe they’ll hire me in a circus, for a side-show

freak.—THE MADE OVER LADY. WHICH, SHE WAS ONCET JUST PLAIN MARTHA

SLAWSON. BUT IS NOW SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS, IT’D MAKE YOU DIZZY TO

LOOK AT HER. But I must be goin’. Them childern o’ mine will ’a’

turned the house upside down with their rapchers over the presents you

brought’m."

 

Mrs. Ronald laid a hand upon her husband’s shoulder. "I’d like to take a

walk, Frank. Won’t you come?"

 

"An’ on the way I’ll show you my new hen-house," promised Martha. "One

o’ the things I’m learnin’ to be, is a chicken-raiser. I’m learnin’

hard, an’, you might say, the chicks is learnin’ harder. But it’ll all

come out right in the end, if both parties hang on, an’ keep a stiff

upper lip. The first time a brood died on me, I ’most fretted myself

sick. But now I learned not to hitch my heart to no hen. I do the best

I can by ’em, an’ leave the rest to proverdence, an’ the inkerbater.

Only, you can take it from me, them inkerbaters may be a improvement on

the old way, but they certaintly is death to the mother-instinc’ in

hens. Hens is like women. The less they have to do, the less they do,

especially if they keep well. The minute you begin turnin’ your

offsprings over to other parties, to be brought up, that’s the time your

sect is goin’ to run down. An’ the chicks don’t grow up with no more

feelin’ o’ reverence for their elders, an’ them that bore’m, then the

childern we’re raisin’ nowadays. It’s all wrong, these modren

contrivances is. We think we’re smart, shovin’ our ways in, ahead o’

nature’s, but just you wait, an’ see what comes o’ this generation o’

kids, give’m time to grow up to be men, an’ women, an’ so forth. You

can take it from me, George Washin’ton an’ Abraham Linco’n wasn’t

brought up in cotton-wool, so that every time somebody crossed’m, an’

they got red in the face with temper, there’d be a trained nurse to pop

a the’mometer under their tongues, to see if they had a ’temperachure.’

What kep’ their childish fevers down was a good fannin’ with mother’s

slipper, an’ they grew up to tell the truth an’ fear the devil, along

with the other grown-up members of the fam’ly. But, these days,

everything’s for the kids, an’ they know it. Believe me, my heart

bleeds for my grandchildern. An’, talkin’ o’ grandchildern, here’s the

model henhouse o’ New England. Internal decoratin’ done by Mr. Sammy

Slawson’s son, junior."

 

Martha held her little party back long enough to relate the tale of

Sammy and the whitewashing.

 

"An’ I told’m," she concluded, "he could walk his little self back, with

his little pail o’ whitewash, an’ his little brush, an’ get busy an’

_keep_ busy, till every last thing in the place got a good coat. I

told’m, ’Don’t you leave a thing go free, young man!’ so I guess we’ll

see a thora job _this_ time, or I’m mistaken."

 

A spotless interior, gleaming, white, proved her surmise correct. Sammy

had evidently made "a thora job" of it this time.

 

Claire would have been satisfied with a brief glance, but her husband

detained her.

 

"I say, Martha," he addressed Mrs. Slawson, "what is it you told young

Sam? ’Not to let a thing go free’?"

 

"Yes, sir."

 

"Well, he’s a model boy. He has obeyed you to the letter. Look here!"

 

Martha, looking in the direction indicated, saw a bunch of animate

white, huddled disconsolately against a far corner of the white wall.

 

"What is it?" she asked.

 

Mr. Ronald made a clucking sound, and the bunch separated sluggishly,

proving itself to be two very thoroughly whitewashed hens.

 

Martha stared a moment aghast. Then gradually, as the truth dawned upon

her, her broad shoulders began to shake.