Kent Knowles: Quahaug | Page 8

Hephzy's invariable prescription."
"Good Lord! Did you drink yours?"
"No--I never do, unless she watches me."
"But your glass is empty. What did you do with it?"
"Emptied it behind the back log. Of course, if you prefer to drink it--"
"Drink it!" His "toddy" splashed the back log, causing a tremendous sizzle.
Before he could relieve his mind further, Hephzy appeared to announce that dinner was ready if we were. We were, most emphatically, so we went into the dining-room.
Hephzy and Jim did most of the talking during the meal. I had talked more that forenoon than I had for a week--I am not a chatty person, ordinarily, which, in part, explains my nickname--and I was very willing to eat and listen. Hephzy, who was garbed in her best gown--best weekday gown, that is; she kept her black silk for Sundays--talked a good deal, mostly about dreams and presentiments. Susanna Wixon, Tobias Wixon's oldest daughter, waited on table, when she happened to think of it, and listened when she did not. Susanna had been hired to do the waiting and the dish-washing during Campbell's brief visit. It was I who hired her. If I had had my way she would have been a permanent fixture in the household, but Hephzy scoffed at the idea. "Pity if I can't do housework for two folks," she declared. "I don't care if you can afford it. Keepin' hired help in a family no bigger than this, is a sinful extravagance." As Susanna's services had been already engaged for the weekend she could not discharge her, but she insisted on doing all the cooking herself.
Her conversation, as I said, dealt mainly with dreams and presentiments. Hephzibah is not what I should call a superstitious person. She doesn't believe in "signs," although she might feel uncomfortable if she broke a looking-glass or saw the new moon over her left shoulder. She has a most amazing fund of common-sense and is "down" on Spiritualism to a degree. It is one of Bayport's pet yarns, that at the Harniss Spiritualist camp-meeting when the "test medium" announced from the platform that he had a message for a lady named Hephzibah C--he "seemed to get the name Hephzibah C"-- Hephzy got up and walked out. "Any dead relations I've got," she declared, "who send messages through a longhaired idiot like that one up there"--meaning the medium,--"can't have much to say that's worth listenin' to. They can talk to themselves if they want to, but they shan't waste MY time."
In but one particular was Hephzy superstitious. Whenever she dreamed of "Little Frank" she was certain something was going to happen. She had dreamed of "Little Frank" the night before and, if she had not been headed off, she would have talked of nothing else.
"I saw him just as plain as I see you this minute, Hosy," she said to me. "I was somewhere, in a strange place--a foreign place, I should say 'twas--and there I saw him. He didn't know me; at least I don't think he did."
"Considering that he never saw you that isn't so surprising," I interrupted. "I think Mr. Campbell would have another cup of coffee if you urged him. Susanna, take Mr. Campbell's cup."
Jim declined the coffee; said he hadn't finished his first cup yet. I knew that, of course, but I was trying to head off Hephzy. She refused to be headed, just then.
"But I knew HIM," she went on. "He looked just the same as he has when I've seen him before--in the other dreams, you know. The very image of his mother. Isn't it wonderful, Hosy!"
"Yes; but don't resurrect the family skeletons, Hephzy. Mr. Campbell isn't interested in anatomy."
"Skeletons! I don't know what you're talkin' about. He wasn't a skeleton. I saw him just as plain! And I said to myself, 'It's little Frank!' Now what do you suppose he came to me for? What do you suppose it means? It means somethin', I know that."
"Means that you weren't sleeping well, probably," I answered. "Jim, here, will dream of cross-seas and the Point Rip to-night, I have no doubt."
Jim promptly declared that if he thought that likely he shouldn't mind so much. What he feared most was a nightmare session with an author.
Hephzibah was interested at once. "Oh, do you dream about authors, Mr. Campbell?" she demanded. "I presume likely you do, they're so mixed up with your business. Do your dreams ever come true?"
"Not often," was the solemn reply. "Most of my dream-authors are rational and almost human."
Hephzy, of course, did not understand this, but it did have the effect for which I had been striving, that of driving "Little Frank" from her mind for the time.
"I don't care," she declared, "I s'pose it's awful foolish and silly of me, but it does seem sometimes as if