The Annals of Ann Part 15

But the oranges hadn't forgotten about being there! I reckon they wanted to see what all that disturbance was about for, I cross my heart, _just_ as I got opposite the swellest-looking man in that whole string of sleepers, a man with silk socks and golf sticks, a long sleeve of mother's knit corset-cover dropped down against the seat in front of him and four oranges rolled out! They rolled slowly, one by one, and dropped to the floor with m.u.f.fled thuds. Then they rolled some more and didn't stop until they reached his feet.

That's how I knew he had on silk socks.

CHAPTER XIV

I'm as lonesome as _Marianna in the Moated Grange_ to-night! Isn't that the lonesomest poem on earth? Everything about it is unsanitary, too, from the rusty flower-pots to the blue fly "buzzing in the pane."

No wonder it got on Marianna's nerves, in her condition, too! But she had one thing to be thankful for--she didn't know how many germs that fly had on its feet!

I'm lonesome for Jean--or somebody! Thank goodness it is nearly time for Waterloo to come! Cousin Eunice said in a letter that we had from her to-day she was trying to raise Waterloo right, but he was a trial to her feelings! Now, poor Cousin Eunice has read Herbert Spencer for the sake of Waterloo's future education ever since he has been born, and she has never let him out of her sight with a nurse for fear she would feed him chewed-up chestnuts and teach him about the Devil. I reckon you spell him with a capital letter, if you don't waste them on presiding elders. But Waterloo doesn't always show how carefully he's been brought up. He is of nervous temperament and told a woman who was sewing on the machine right loud the other day: "Hus', hus'! G.o.d's sake, make noise _easy_!"

This is disheartening after all the trouble she has taken with his morals and diet and things like that! She never lets him eat the "deadly" things that Doctor Gordon is always talking about, but she _does_ keep a little pure sugar candy on hand all the time to be used only as a last resort. When she can't make him do any other way on earth she uses the candy.

Speaking of deadly things reminds me of Doctor Bynum's friends, the germs. He has told Miss Irene so many stories about their unpleasant ways that she got to not believing in kissing, but he said pshaw! it looked like we all had to die of germs anyhow, and so he'd rather die of that kind than any other!

Cousin Eunice's letters always tell us so many interesting things about all our friends in the city. She and Ann Lisbeth still live close neighbors, but they have both bought beautiful places out on one of the pikes and each one is claiming to be more countrified than the other. One day Ann Lisbeth ran over and told Cousin Eunice that Doctor Gordon had heard an owl in their yard the night before, but Cousin Eunice told her that wasn't anything! She and Rufe had had a _bat_ in their bedroom!

Doctor Gordon has two automobiles now. He had them the last time I was in the city and I got to find out exactly what "limousine" means. I had an idea before that it meant _dark green_, because--oh, well, I needn't tell the reason; it was silly enough to think such a thing without making excuses for it. But you know so many swell cars _are_ painted dark green, and so many swell cars are limousines!

Ann Lisbeth is a great help to Doctor Gordon in his practice, he says.

She always remembers the different babies' names and looks up subjects for him in his surgical books that would knock the knee-cap off of Jean's little word, "genuflections."

No matter how fine a doctor a lady's husband is she is never permitted to mention it to her friends, for this is called "unethical." But if she's expecting company of an afternoon she can happen to have a bottle with a queer thing inside setting on the mantelpiece and when the company asks what on earth that thing is she can say, "For goodness' sake! My husband must have forgotten that! Why that's Senator Himuck's appendix!"

Ann Lisbeth seems to get sweeter every year and you would never know she has a foreign accent now except on Sunday night when the cook's away and the gas stove doesn't do right.

Another good piece of news Cousin Eunice wrote to-day was that the Youngs are going to try it again at the bungalow this summer.

Professor Young has to go somewhere to rest up from his studies. For nearly eighteen months now he's been sitting up late at night and spending the whole of Sat.u.r.days, even taking his coffee out to the laboratory in a thermos bottle, studying pharmacy. He is delighted with the progress he has made, for he says he has not only learned how to make a perfectly splendid cold cream for his wife's complexion, but has discovered just which bad-smelling stuff put with another bad-smelling stuff is best to develop his films. He says his knowledge of pharmacy has saved him a lot of money in this way.

Speaking of curious couples reminds me of the Gayles. They're not half as queer now as they were before they married though. At present they are neither in Heaven, nor on earth, exactly, but they are cruising on the Mediterranean. They send me post-cards from every place and I stick them in my alb.u.m with great pride.

Another family that we're always glad to hear from is the Macdonalds.

Poor little fluffy-haired Miss Cis! I reckon the very last of her dimples will soon be changed into wrinkles, for there's _another_ one since the twins! n.o.body can say that Miss Cis is not bearing up bravely, though. She does all she can to present a stylish, straight-front appearance when she goes out, which isn't often. But at home they are all perfectly happy together, Mr. Macdonald getting down on the floor to play bear, and if he _does_ look more like a devil's horse while he's doing it, with his long arms and legs, the twins don't know the difference.

Marrying has helped Julius' looks more than anybody I ever saw. His cheeks have filled out until he's as handsome as a floor-walker. And they're so contented that Marcella says actually when she finds a pin pointing toward her she doesn't know what to wish for.

You may have caught on to it before now, my diary, that the reason I'm telling you this very last news of all our friends is because I'm going to stop writing _sure enough_ to-night! I'm ashamed to keep breaking my promise to mother.

The only ones I've left out, I believe, are Aunt Laura and Bertha. I wish I had forgotten them for I don't like to say anything hateful in my diary.

Aunt Laura has joined some kind of New Thoughters and has grown quant.i.ties of new brown hair on the strength of it. And she dresses in champagne silk all the time.

As for Bertha--she _lives_ to keep up with the "best people," meaning by this that she runs up to the hairdresser's every other day to see if she can learn how many "society men" have thrown their wives down the steps or poured boiling coffee over them since she last heard.

I'm sorry I thought of Bertha so near the last, for I don't want to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, my diary. So I'll branch off and mention something sweet right away.

That blessed Waterloo! He's the sweetest thing I know anything about!

Just about this time I reckon he's begging his "Daddy-boy" to sing Feep Alsie, Ben Bolt, for that's been his precious little sleepy song ever since he's been born.

When I think of those three and how happy they are, and how satisfied they are just to be together, I know that Rufe told me the truth that day, a long, long time ago! There is only one subject worth writing about--or one object worth living for! May every one of you grandchildren find just such an object, and be as happy as they are while living for it!

It does seem that I ought to be able to think of something beautiful to wind up my diary with! Everything about me is beautiful! The honeysuckle is smelling like the very soul of spring and love just outside my window--and there's a bust of Lord Byron on my mantelpiece close by. Such a tiny bust--the curly head just fits into the palm of my hand--when I get grown I'm going to have one big enough to burn candles before! Not that I shall burn candles before it--for, to tell the truth, I'd much rather be burning my fingers cooking oatmeal for some big, brown-eyed "Daddy-boy" and tiny, brown-eyed Waterloo!

Mammy Lou came to my window just as I wrote this last and stuck her head in.

"Name o' Deuteronomy!" she said in a loud whisper when she saw this book open before me. "What good'll your _gran'children_ do you, I'd like to know--if you set up all night and lose your looks so you'll nuvver fin' a husban'?"

THE END