A Man of Honor Part 5

"O yes! but every lady washes up the things at least once a day. It would never do to trust it altogether to the servants, you know."

"None of them are sufficiently careful and trustworthy, do you mean?"

"Well, not exactly that; but it's our way here, and if a lady were to neglect it people would think her a poor housekeeper."

"Are there any other duties devolving upon Virginian housekeepers besides 'was.h.i.+ng up things?' You see I am trying to learn all I can of a life which is as charmingly strange to me as that of Turkey or China would be if I were to go to either country."

"Any other duties? Indeed there are, and you shall learn what they are, if you won't find it stupid to go my rounds with me. I'm going now."

"I should find dullness itself interesting with you as my fellow observer of it."

"Right gallantly said, kind sir," said Miss Sudie, with an exaggerated curtsy. "But if you're going to make pretty speeches I'll get impudent directly. I'm dreadfully given to it anyhow, and I've a notion to say one impudent thing right now."

"Pray do. I pardon you in advance."

"Well, then, what makes you say 'Virginian housekeepers?'"

"What else should I say?"

"Why, Virginia housekeepers, of course, like anybody else."

"But 'Virginia' is not an adjective, cousin. You would not say 'England housekeepers' or 'France housekeepers,' would you?" asked Robert.

"No, but I would say 'New York housekeepers,' 'Ma.s.sachusetts housekeepers,' or 'New Jersey housekeepers,' and so I say 'Virginia housekeepers,' too. I reckon you would find it a little troublesome to carry out your rule, wouldn't you, Cousin Robert?"

"I am fairly beaten, I own; and in consideration of my frank acknowledgment of defeat, perhaps you will permit _me_ to be a trifle impudent."

"After that gallant speech you made just now, I can hardly believe such a thing possible. But let me hear you try, please."

"O it's very possible, I a.s.sure you!" said Robert. "See if it is not.

What I want to ask is, why you Virginians so often use the word 'reckon'

in the sense of 'think' or 'presume,' as you did a moment since?"

"Because it's right," said Sudie.

"No, cousin, it is not good English," replied Robert.

"Perhaps not, but it's _good Virginian_, and that's better for my purposes. Besides, it must be good English. St. Paul used it twice."

"Did he? I was not aware that the Apostle to the Gentiles spoke English at all."

"Come, Cousin Robert, I must give out dinner now. Do you want to carry my key-basket?"

CHAPTER VIII.

_Miss Sudie makes an Apt Quotation._

My friend who writes novels tells me that there is no other kind of exercise which so perfectly rests an over-tasked brain as riding on horseback does. His theory is that when the mind is overworked it will not quit working at command, but goes on with the labor after the tools have been laid aside. If the worker goes to bed, either he finds it impossible to go to sleep or sleeping he dreams, his mind thus working harder in sleep than if he were awake. Walking, this novelist friend says, affords no relief. On the contrary, one thinks better when walking than at any other time. But on horseback he finds it impossible to confine his thoughts to any subject for two minutes together. He may begin as many trains of thought as he chooses, but he never gets past their beginning. The motion of the animal jolts it all up into a jumble, and rest is the inevitable result. The man's animal spirits rise, in sympathy, perhaps, with those of his horse, and as the animal in him begins to a.s.sert itself his intellect yields to its master and suffers itself to become quiescent.

Now it is possible that Mr. Robert Pagebrook had found out this fact about horseback exercise, and determined to profit by it to the extent of securing all the intellectual rest he could during his stay at s.h.i.+rley. At any rate, his early morning ride with "Cousin Sudie" was repeated, not once, but every day when decided rain did not interfere.

He became greatly interested, too, in the Virginian system of housekeeping, and made daily study of it in company with Miss Sudie, whose key-basket he carried as she went her rounds from dining-room to smoke-house, from smoke-house to store-room, from store-room to garden, and from garden to the shady gable of the house, where Miss Sudie "set"

the churn every morning, a process which consisted of scalding it out, putting in the cream, and wrapping wet cloths all over the head of it and far up the dasher handle, as a precaution against the possible results of carelessness on the part of the half dozen little darkeys whose daily duty it was to "chun." Mr. Robert soon became well versed in all the mysteries of "giving out" dinner and other things pertaining to the office of housekeeper--an office in which every Virginian woman takes pride, and one in the duties of which every well-bred Virginian girl is thoroughly skilled. (Corollary--good dinners and general comfort.)

Old "Aunty" cooks are always extremely slow of motion, and so the young ladies who carry the keys have a good deal of necessary leisure during their morning rounds. Miss Sudie had a pretty little habit, as a good many other young women there have, of carrying a book in her key-basket, so that she might read while aunt Kizzey (I really do not know of what proper noun this very common one is an abbreviation) made up her tray.

Picking up a volume he found there one morning, Robert continued a desultory conversation by saying:

"You don't read Montaigne, do you, Cousin Sudie?"

"O yes! I read everything--or anything, rather. I never saw a book I couldn't get something out of, except Longfellow."

"Except Longfellow!" exclaimed Robert in surprise. "Is it possible you don't enjoy Longfellow? Why, that is heresy of the rankest kind!"

"I know it is, but I'm a heretic in a good many things. I hate Longfellow's hexameters; I don't like Tennyson; and I can't understand Browning any better than he understands himself. I know I ought to like them all, as you all up North do, but I don't."

Mr. Robert was shocked. Here was a young girl, fresh and healthy, who could read prosy old Montaigne's chatter with interest; who knew Pope by heart, and Dryden almost as well; who read the prose and poetry of the eighteenth century constantly, as he knew; and who, on a former occasion, had pleaded guilty to a liking for sonnets, but who could find nothing to like in Tennyson, Longfellow, or Browning. Somehow the discovery was not an agreeable one to him though he could hardly say why, and so he chose not to pursue the subject further just then. He said instead:

"That is the queerest Virginianism I've heard yet--'you all.'"

"It's a very convenient one, you'll admit, and a Virginian don't care to go far out of his way in such things."

"You will think me critical this morning, Cousin Sudie, but I often wonder at the carelessness, not of Virginians only, but of everybody else, in the use of contractions. 'Don't,' for instance, is well enough as a contraction for 'do not, but nearly everybody uses it, as you did just now, for 'does not.'"

"Do don't lecture me, Cousin Robert. I'm a heretic, I tell you, in grammar."

"'Do don't' is the richest provincialism I have heard yet, Cousin Sudie.

I really must make a note of that."

"Cousin Robert, do you read Montaigne?"

"Sometimes. Why?"

"Do you remember what he says about custom and grammar?"

"No. What is it?"

"He says it, remember, and not I. He says 'they that fight custom with grammar are fools.' What a rude old fellow he was, wasn't he?"

Mr. Pagebrook suddenly remembered that he was to dine that day at his cousin Edwin's house, and that it was time for him to go, as he intended to walk, Graybeard having fallen lame during that morning's gallop with Miss Sudie.

CHAPTER IX.