Chapter 4 No.4

You remember, my diary, a good many pages back I mentioned in here a pair of Bohemians that were married to each other and were friends of ours and would come to Rufe's every week and we would all do funny things? Well, I couldn't write about them then, for I didn't have any space for married people, wanting to save it purely for folks that loved each other.

But now it does seem like Providence that they've come down here to spend the summer in the country, for there's not a single loving soul left to write about, Aunt Laura being gone and Brother Sheffield never very loving when she was here, except chicken.

Their name is Mrs. Marie and Augustus Young. Father says that Adam or the legislature knew a thing or two when it named them Young. He is a professor and owns a chair in a college that must either have gold nails in it or sit extra good, for Rufe says it is worth five thousand dollars a year. Mrs. Young sings vocal. I wish she didn't, especially in a parlor. If anybody is singing or reciting a speech on a platform and flowers and electric lights it thrills you and you really enjoy it; but if they do it in a close room, especially if it trills high or has to kneel down and get red in the face, it makes you so ashamed for the one that's doing it, and for yourself, too, that you look straight at the carpet. Even then the blood rushes to your head.

They have built a house with such a wide porch running all around it that it reminds you of a little, tiny boy with a great big hat pulled down over his eyes, which is called a bungalow. They said they had brought a "complete outfit for light housekeeping" along with them, but when mother saw it she laughed considerable on the outside of the bungalow, for it was fifty-three books, mostly ending in "ology," a hammock and some chairs that lean away back, a guitar apiece, a great many little glass cases that you stick bugs and butterflies in if you can catch them, a picture of the Apostle Hosea, with his head all wrapped up like an old lady with the neuralgia, which they both said they could not live without, and a punching-bag, which they punched a great deal in the city, not having any baby to amuse themselves with, which was a good thing for the baby I reckon. So mother sent them over a great many things and Professor Young said she was the most sensible woman he ever saw, including a biscuit board and a sifter. They have been here a few days now and are delighted with the country air and the green scenery, and, although it does seem proud to say it, me. They thought very highly of me at Cousin Eunice's and said I was the most "interesting revelation of artless juvenile expression" they ever saw, which I wrote down on paper and when I came home taught it to Mammy Lou to give in at the experience meeting.

One morning early, while mammy was beating the biscuit for breakfast, and I was up in the pear tree right by the kitchen door I nearly fell out with surprise when I saw Professor Young coming around the house with a pretty shirt open at the neck that he admires and two great big dominecker roosters up in his arms which were both squawking very loud. Mammy Lou came to the door to see what all the noise was about, and he said she was the very person he wanted to see.

"Auntie," he commenced, trying to get into his pocket and wipe his face with his handkerchief, which was greatly perspiring, but he couldn't do it for the roosters, "my wife and I are in a quandary. We are both ignorant of the preferred method of inflicting a painless yet instantaneous death upon a fowl."

Mammy's eyes began to shine, for she loves big words like she loves watermelons, and without a sign of manners she never even tried to answer his question, but looked up at me in the tree and says:

"Baby, kin you rickollect all that to write it down?"

Professor Young then looked up into the tree too and says: "Why, Mistress Ann, how entirely characteristic!" And then he wanted to know what book I was reading and I told him, John Halifax, Gentleman, which I have had for my favorite book since I was eleven years old; and the roosters continued to squawk. I got down then and asked Professor Young if he wouldn't come into the house, but he said no and asked his question to mammy over again. She looked at me and to save her manners I told her right quick what the meaning of it was, me understanding it on account of being precocious and also at Rufe's last winter, where they use strange words.

"Thar now! Is that all it's about?" she asked awfully disappointed, for she thought from the words "painless death" it must be something about preaching. Then in a minute, when she saw that he was still waiting, she turned around to him and said: "Whar is the chicken at that you want killed?"

He held the roosters away from him and, looking at them as proud as a little boy looks at a bucket of minnows, he said:

"These are they!"

This tickled mammy so, and me too, though I remembered my manners, that she began to laugh, which shook considerable under her apron, and said:

"Well, gentlemen! Whut do you want to kill them for?"

"For breakfast," he said; and, noticing her laughing, his face got to looking so pitiful all in a minute that it made me just wish that Cinderella's fairy godmother would come along and turn those roosters into nice little pullets all fried and laying on parsley.

"Why, Mr. Professor," mammy told him, "them roosters is so old that they will soon die a natural death if you leave them alone; and they're so big that you might fry 'em frum now till breakfast time on Jedgment Day, and then they wouldn't be fitten!"

When she told him this he did manage to get out his handkerchief, I thought maybe to cry on, he looked so disappointed, but it was just to perspire on.

"I-er, observed that they were unduly large," the poor man told her, "but I-er, thought maybe the larger a country thing was the better!"

I thought of horse-flies and ticks, but was too mannerly to mention them, especially so near breakfast time. Just then mother and father came out of the back door, and when they heard the tale of the roosters they both invited him to come right in and have breakfast with us, and said they would tie their legs together so they could flop around the back yard, but couldn't get away, and I could run over and bring Mrs. Young.

Last night when I got home I was too tired to write or anything else, for it was the night of the glorious Fourth! Professor Young and Mrs. Young both kept remarking all day how lovely it was to be able to spend the Fourth of July in a cool ravine instead of in the horrid city where there were so many smells of gunpowder and little boys. They said they must have me go along for the woods wouldn't really be woodsy without me, as I was the genius loci. I didn't know at first what that was, but I know now that it makes you tired and perspiry to be the genius loci of eight miles of woods on the Fourth of July. Rufe and Cousin Eunice couldn't think of half as many peculiar things to do when they were courting as the Youngs.

We ate a number of stuffed eggs which kinder made up for the tiredness, me being very fond of them, but Professor Young is crazy about Mrs. Young's singing voice and every time we'd come to an extra pretty place he would say: "Marie, my love, sing something just here," so we'd have to stand still on our legs, it often being too snaky to sit down, while she sang. One time she thought up part of a song without a speck of tune to it, and it was in a language across the ocean. All I could make out was "Parsifal," and every once in a while she would stop a minute in the song and say a word that sounded like "Itch," though I don't suppose it was, being in a song. Every time she would say itch he would scratch, for the poor man was covered with ticks.

But the most trying thing was the bugs and butterflies, which being "naturalists" they caught. We had to run all over the ground and sides of the hills for them, and empty our dinner out on a nice, shady rock, so we could use the lunch box to put them in. When we got back we found it all covered with ants, but we were so hungry we thought we'd brushed them all off, though in the cake we found we hadn't. If a person hasn't ever eaten an ant, my diary, there ain't any use in trying to make them understand what they taste like, so I won't dwell on that. Professor Young said though he was willing to eat them for the sake of his beloved science, though I don't see how it helped science any.

Toward evening we got to a fine place in the branch to wade and Mrs. Young said, oh, let's do it; it would remind us of our childhood days. So we soon had our feet bare, with our thoughts on our childhood days, and never once stopping to remember that we didn't have a thing to wipe them on. Nobody said so much as towel until we got out, and then it was too late, so we were very much pained and annoyed every step of the way home on account of our gritty feet.

Another morning early we decided to go out and see the sun rise, like Thoreau. (They tell me how to spell all the odd words.) We went up to the tiptop of a high hill, and when the sun was just high enough to make you squint your eyes Mr. Young remarked that he realized his life was "replete with glorious possibilities," and he said in such moments he felt that he could "encompass his heart's desire." He said he fain would be a novelist. Now, this is the only subject they ever fall out about, for he's always wanting to be something that he is not. Last winter when he met Doctor Gordon at Rufe's he decided he wanted to be a doctor, for he said they could always make a living, no matter where they were, while a poor college professor had to stay wherever he had a chair to sit in. So he went to a store where you buy rubber arms and legs and things and bought a long black bag like Doctor Gordon's, full of shiny, scary-looking scissors and knives which cost seventy-five dollars, to lay away till fall when the doctor's school opened up again. In two weeks Mrs. Young had got the store man to take the things back for half price because Professor Young had decided he wanted to study banjo playing instead of doctoring and had bought a banjo trimmed with silver.

She knew whenever he said he wanted to be anything it would cost as much as two new dresses, and then have to be exchanged for something else, so she asked him if he would have to buy anything to begin this novel-writing business with. He proudly told her no, for his "Mother Nature had endowed him with a complete equipment," and he thumped his forehead between his eyes and his straw hat. Then she told him to go on. He said it would be a good time to get material from the study of the "primitive creatures" around here in the country.

I hoped these "primitive creatures" were not the kind of insects you would have to empty the lunch box for, nor be careful not to pull off their hind legs while you were catching them, not knowing just what they were.

I was scared good when he said he thought the girl that milked Mrs. Hedges' cows would be a good one to begin on. He said if Marie didn't mind he would go over to the farthest pasture where he could see her then and draw her out to see what was in her! This sounded terrible to me, knowing that he used some sickly smelling stuff on the bugs that killed them before they had time to say a word, and I thought maybe because Emma Belle was a poor servant girl he was going to do her the same way.

He had always seemed such a kind-hearted man to me, and I saw him and Emma Belle standing at the fence talking and he was not trying to hold anything to her nose, still I didn't feel easy till he got back. Mrs. Young asked him what he had learned, and if his novel would be along "socialistic lines" or a "romance in a simple bucolic setting." That "bucolic" reminded me of Bertha's little innocent baby, and I wished I was at home nursing it even if it did cry, rather than be out sun-rising with such a peculiar man. He said it would be a "pastoral," and that the girl's eyes were exactly like his first sweetheart's, which was remarkable. Mrs. Young spoke up right quick and said there wasn't anything remarkable in that, because all common, country girls looked alike and they all had about as much expression as a squash.

We haven't been out early acting like Thoreau any more, for Mrs. Young said it was the most foolish of all the foolish things Augustus had made her do, and he could continue to associate with milkmaids by himself if he wanted to, which he has. This morning she came over to our house early to ask mother if you singed a picked chicken over a blaze or what, and if she didn't think Thoreau was an idiot. Mother said yes, you did, if it had pin feathers on it, and she didn't know much about Thoreau, but she preferred men that paid taxes and ate off of white tablecloths. Mrs. Young said she thought all men that read bugology and admired pictures like Hosea were a little idiotic and she wished she had married a man like father. Mother said well, she better not be too sure, for they all have their faults.

After a good long time Professor Young came in, not finding Marie at the bungalow, looking awful hot and cross. The sight of him seemed to make Mrs. Young feel worse than ever and she told him she had just come over to consult mother about her journey home to-morrow, although she hadn't mentioned it to us before. She went on to say that he might spend the rest of the summer, or the rest of his life if he wanted to, boarding over at Mrs. Hedges' where he could see Emma Belle morning, noon and night, instead of only in the morning. He said why, he was utterly surprised for she hadn't mentioned such a thing to him before, but she told him he hadn't spent enough time with her lately even to know whether or not she still retained the power of speech. He said right quick, oh, he never doubted that! She said, well, she was going and he needn't argue with her. He said he wasn't going to argue, he was only too glad to leave such a blasted place, for he wanted material for his novel, but the farmer's girl he had talked with the first morning, and the plow-boys he had been associating with ever since were all such fools he couldn't get any material from them.

The minute he said that she seemed to feel better and change her mind. She said Augustus ought to be ashamed to talk that way about poor ignorant things which never had any opportunities! He said he wanted to go back to the city anyway where there was a bath-tub, but she told him he was very foolish to think about leaving such a cool, "Arcadian" spot; their friends would all laugh at them for coming back so soon. She said she had merely mentioned going back for his pleasure, for all the world knew how she loved the country. He finally said he loved it too, so they would stay, but he would be forced to give up novel-writing because the country people around here are all fools.

I've heard Professor Young talk about sitting in a college chair being a hard life, and Doctor Gordon says doctoring is a hard life, and Rufe says that editing is a hard life, but, my diary, between you and me, from the looks of things this morning, I kinder believe that marrying is a hard life, too.