At Home with the Jardines Part 27

"Faith!" he shouted, below his breath. "Faith, for G.o.d's sake run here and catch me! This d.a.m.ned thing is giving way. Haul me back. Oh, my coat won't save me! Leggo my coat-tails. Put your arms around my waist. Stop laughing! Put--your--arms--around my waist--I say--and haul me back! Brace your feet and pull!"

I did as he desired, bracing my feet and dragging him back to safety by his leather belt.

We were detected, however, by Bee and Captain Featherstone, who came strolling gracefully around the corner of the house just as Jimmie's convulsed clutch loosened from the trellis and set all the vines to dancing and trembling, as if a wind-storm had pa.s.sed over them.

There was no need of their asking what had happened. The ruin spoke for itself. Captain Featherstone gallantly helped me to pick up and replant my poor nasturtiums, but they had been so bruised and their feelings so wounded by their undignified tumble that they did nothing but sulk all the remainder of the summer, never once blooming out handsomely as they should, although I carefully explained to them just how it happened. They seemed to think that it was my fault, and they never forgave me. Sometimes flowers are as unreasonable as people.

Three days after Billy's arrival, when he had thoroughly mastered all the details of Peach Orchard and knew personally all the cows, the horses, the white bulldog, the cats, the chickens, the little calves, and the reachable branches of every tree on the place, old Amos came in to speak to me.

He stood before me, bowing, with his hat in his hand:

"Well'm, Miss Faith honey, I reckon de time's about ripe foh de goats.

Dat boy's investigated every nook an' cornder ob de place, an' ef you tink bes' I'll go after de goats dis afternoon."

"Very well, Amos," I said. "We are all going to Philadelphia to-day to attend the launching of Mr. Beguelin's yacht, and we are going to take Billy. You can bring the goats up while we are away, and tomorrow morning we can give them to him."

"Yas'm," said Amos, bowing. "I'll have 'em hyah when y'all gets back."

I will say nothing of the ceremony of the launching of the yacht, although, from Cary's uplifted face, you would have thought it was the christening of a first-born child. Jimmie says we needn't say anything. We were worse!

Billy was wildly excited over the breaking of the bottle of champagne, and asked a thousand questions about it.

The next morning we all went out to the barn to see him receive his goats. His face fairly beamed when he saw them. He clapped his hands.

"Oh, Uncle Aubrey! Miss Tats! Are they for me?"

Then he flung his arms around his mother's neck--Bee's neck, mind you!--and cried out:

"Oh, mother, I do think I have the kindest relatives in all the world!

What other little boys' relatives would think of the kindness of giving them goats?"

"That's right, my boy," said Captain Featherstone, looking with open admiration at Bee's motherly att.i.tude, on her knees beside her boy and his arms around her neck, "always be grateful. It's a rare virtue these days."

Jimmie, however, who always spoils things, winked at Aubrey. But Billy's next remark threw us all into fits of laughter.

"Oh, Uncle Aubrey, can't we have a ceremony of launching the goats, and mayn't I break a bottle of champagne over their horns?"

Jimmie fairly yelled. Billy looked distressed.

"Their horns are very strong!" he urged. "I don't believe it would hurt them one bit. And you might give me one of those little bottles I saw Mr. Jimmie open--you remember the little one you had after the two big ones, don't you, Mr. Jimmie?"

"Oh, yes, Billy," I said. "Mr. Jimmie remembers. (You'd be ashamed not to, wouldn't you, Jimmie?)"

"You think you're funny," growled Jimmie, witheringly, as Sir Wemyss and Captain Featherstone broke out afresh, and even Artie Beg left off looking at Cary long enough to smile at Jimmie's scarlet face and Mrs.

Jimmie's anxious one. She moved quietly over to where Jimmie was standing with his hands in his pockets, and slipped her arm through his. She did not know quite what it was all about, but she felt that they were laughing at her Jimmie, and, as usual, she looked reproachfully at me.

Billy's plaintive voice recalled us.

"Yes, dearie," I hastened to say. "You may have a small bottle of champagne--or perhaps Apollinaris water would be better, it sparkles just the same, and if it flew in the goats' eyes it wouldn't make them smart, and the champagne would."

Billy beamingly acquiesced.

"Now I must just think up some good names for them," he said, with an air of importance, "and perhaps I'll have to ask Uncle Aubrey and Mr.

Jimmie to help me. It's awful hard to think up suitable names for goats."

"All right, old man," said Aubrey. "Come along. We'll think 'em up now, and have the launching this afternoon, and invite some people to the ceremony."

So he and Billy and Jimmie took leave of us, and strolled away together, Billy with his hands in his trousers' pockets and striving to take just as long steps as they did. He would have given his kingdom for a pipe!

We got up quite a little party, and worked very hard over it. Bee and Captain Featherstone delivered the invitations, and people thought it was a most delicious joke, and came in a mood of the utmost hilarity.

At first Billy wanted to break the bottle himself, but upon being told that girls always did it, he invited a bewitching little maid of seven, Kathleen Van Osdel, to christen them, while Billy valiantly sat in the goat-carriage, waiting for Aubrey and Amos to let go of the goats'

horns.

The names were kept a profound secret, but Jimmie had a fas.h.i.+on of going purple in the face, and pretending he was only going to sneeze.

He walked around among the guests trying to appear unconcerned--which made me watch him closely.

He had appointed himself master of ceremonies. He it was who put the Apollinaris bottle into Kathleen's hands, and held her in his arms while she leaned down and broke the bottle over the horns of the gentler goat.

Then her childish treble shrilled out:

"I christen thee, Roosevelt and Congress!" she cried out.

"Let go!" shouted Billy, standing up in the goat carriage, his cheeks like scarlet flowers.

Amos and Aubrey released their hold, Kathleen screamed with excitement, and away bounded the goats down the driveway, with Sir Wemyss after them on horseback, for fear anything might happen.

But nothing did happen, and in ten minutes back they came to receive congratulations from everybody.

"Are they all right, Billy?" I cried.

"Yes, Miss Tats. Congress is just as gentle as can be when you let him alone. They go splendidly, except when Roosevelt b.u.t.ts. You know he is always b.u.t.ting into Congress and making trouble."

At that I understood, for Jimmie deliberately rolled on the gra.s.s.

"I noticed that peculiarity of the goats," he gasped, when he could speak, "but if I had trained that child a month, he couldn't have put it better. It's--it's simply too good to be true!"

Then he went away to explain the joke to Lady Mary.

I think Bee enjoyed the house-party in spite of its gardening flavour, for we entertained quite a little. At another time I gave a musicale, and had people out from town; we were invited about while automobiles snorted and chunked into Peach Orchard at all hours of the day to the everlasting terror of the cats, who streaked by us and flashed up trees in simple lines of long gray fur.

It was strange how the cat family resembled human beings, for it was the young cats, Puffy and Pinkie and Fitz and Corbett, who got used to the automobiles first, and ceased to run at their approach. Youth is ever progressive and adaptable, while poor old Mitnick crouched in the fork of a high pine, and glared with her yellow eyes and waved her great tail in furious revolt at those puffing, snorting monsters which she never could abide anyway,--and she was glad she couldn't.

We had no automobile, but the sorrels were there in the height of their glory and slimness, and we still basked in the refulgence of the coachman and footman of Bee's own selection, so her soul was at peace.

Only one thing happened to mar our pleasure. Jimmie fell ill.

Mrs. Jimmie hunted me up one blistering morning, and said, anxiously: