“She never comes to see us!” said my Uncle. “Nor those youngsters of hers. We’ve never had them here but once. They’re too ‘advanced’ for old-fashioned folks.”
Uncle Jake’s long upper lip set firmly; I remembered that look, as he used to sit in his wagon and talk with mother at our gate, refusing to come in, little sunny-haired Drusilla looking shyly at me from under her sunbonnet the while.
Where was Drusilla? Surely not—that! A frail, weak, elderly, quiet, little woman stood there by Aunt Dorcas, her smooth fine, ash-brown hair drawn tightly back to a flat knot behind, her dull blue calico dress falling starkly about her.
She came forward, smiling, and held out a thin work-worn hand. “We’re so glad to see you, Cousin John,” she said. “We certainly are.”
They made much of me in the old familiar ways I had so thirsted for. The sense of family background, of common knowledge and experience was comforting in the extreme, the very furnishings and clothes as I recalled them. I told them what a joy it was.
This seemed to please Uncle Jake enormously.
“I thought you’d do it,” he said. “Like to find one place that hasn’t been turned upside down by all these newfangled notions. Dreadful things have been goin’ on, John, while you were amongst them Fijis.”
I endeavored to explain to him something of the nature and appearance of the inhabitants of Tibet, but it made small impression. Uncle Jake’s mind was so completely occupied by what was in it, that any outside fact or idea had small chance of entry.
“They’ve got wimmin votin’ now, I understand,” he pursued; “I don’t read the papers much, they are so ungodly, but I’ve heard that. And they’ve been meddlin’ with divine providence in more ways than one—but I keep out of it, and so does Aunt Dorcas and the girl here.”
He looked around at my Aunt, who smiled her gentle, faithful smile, and at Drusilla, who dropped her eyes and flushed faintly. I suspected her of secret leanings toward the movement of the world outside.
“I don’t allow my family off the farm,” he went on, “except when we go to meetin’, and that’s not often. There’s hardly an orthodox preacher left, seems to me; but we go up to the Ridge meetin’ house sometimes.”
“I should think you would find it a little dull—don’t you?” I ventured.
Drusilla flashed a grateful look at me.
“Nothing of the sort,” he answered. “I was born on this farm, and it’s big enough for anybody to be contented on. Your Aunt was born over in Hadley Holler—and she’s contented enough. As for Drusilly—” he looked at her again with real affection, “Drusilla’s always been a good girl—never made any trouble in her life. Unless ’twas when she pretty near married that heretic minister—eh, Drusilly?”
My cousin did not respond warmly to this sally, but neither did she show signs of grief. I was conscious of a faint satisfaction that she had not married the heretic minister.
They made me very welcome, so welcome indeed that as days passed, Uncle Jake even broached the subject of my remaining there.
“I’ve got no son,” he said, “and a girl can’t run the farm. You stay here, John, and keep things goin’, and I’ll will it to you—what do you say? You ain’t married, I see. Just get you a nice girl—if there’s any left, and settle down here.”
I thanked him warmly, but said I must have time to consider—that I had thought of accepting other work which offered.
He was most insistent about it. “You better stay here, John. Here’s pure air and pure food—none of these artificial kickshaws I hear of folks havin’ nowadays. We smoke our own hams just as we used to do in my grandfather’s time—there’s none better. We buy sugar and rice and coffee and such as that; but I grind my own corn in the little mill there on the creek—reckon I’m the only one who uses it now. And your Aunt runs her loom to this day. Drusilly can, too, but she ’lows she hates to do it. Girls aren’t what they used to be when I was young!”
It did not seem possible that Uncle Jake had ever been young. His sturdy, stooping frame, his hard, ruddy features were the same at seventy as I remembered them at forty, only the hair, whitened and thinned, was different.
My bedroom was exactly as when I last slept in it, on my one visit to the farm as a boy of fifteen. Drusilla had seemed only a baby then—a slender little five-year old. She had followed me about in silence, with adoring eyes, and I had teased her!—I hated to think of how I had teased her.
The gold in her hair was all dulled and faded, the rose-leaf color of her cheeks had faded, too, and her blue eyes wore a look of weary patience. She worked hard. Her mother was evidently feeble now, and the labor required in that primitive home was considerable.
The old negro brought water from the spring and milked the cows, but all the care of the dairy, the cooking for the family, the knitting and sewing and mending and the sweeping, scrubbing and washing was in the hands of Aunt Dorcas and Drusilla.
She would make her mother sit down and chat with me, while Uncle Jake smoked his cob pipe, but she herself seemed always at work.
“There’s no getting any help nowadays,” said my Uncle. “Even if we needed it. Old Joe there stayed on—he was here before I was born. Joe must be eighty or over—there’s no telling the age of niggers. But the young ones are too uppity for any use. They want to be paid out of all reason, and treated like white folks at that!”
He boasted that he had never worn a shirt or a pair of socks made off the place. “In my father’s time we raised a
