Some Everyday Folk and Dawn | Page 6

the cookin' week about w'en the house ain't full. Grandma makes 'em do that; it saves rows about it not bein' fair. You won't ketch sight of Dawn till dinner. She'll want to get herself up a bit, you bein' new; she always does for a fresh person, but she soon gets tired of it."
"And you, are you going to get yourself up because I'm new?"
"Not much; boys ain't that way so much as the wimmin," he said, and the grin we exchanged was the germ of a friendship that ripened as our acquaintance progressed. I intended to settle down to the enjoyment afforded by my sense of humour. I had preserved it intact as a private personal accomplishment. On the stage, having steered clear of comedy and confined myself to tragedy, it had never been cheapened and made nauseous by sham and machine representations indigenous to the hated footlights, and was an untapped preserve to be drawn upon now.
So I was not to see Dawn till the midday dinner; she was to appear last, like the star at a concert.
A star she verily was when eventually she came before me carrying a well-baked roast on an old-fashioned dish. Her lovely face was scarlet from hurry and the fire, her bright hair gleamed in coquettish rolls, and a loose sleeve displayed a round and dimpled forearm--a fitting continuance of the taper fingers grasping the chief dish of the wholesome and liberal menu she had prepared.
Old Uncle Jake took the carver's place, but Grandma Clay sat at his left elbow and instructed him what to do. He handed the helpings to her, and she supplemented each with some of all the vegetables, irrespective of the wishes of the consumers, to whom they were handed in a business-like method. The puddings were distributed on the same principle, grandma even putting milk and sugar on the plates as for children; and further, she talked in a choleric way, as though the children were in bad grace owing to some misdemeanour, but that was merely one of her mannerisms, as that of others is to smile and be sweet while they inwardly fume.
Excepting this, the unimpressive old smudges hung above the mantel, and probably standing for some family progenitors, gazed out of their caricatured eyes on an uneventful meal. Conversation was choppy and of the personal order, not interesting to a stranger to those mentioned. I made a few duty remarks to Uncle Jake, which he received with suspicion, so I left him in peace to suck his teeth and look like a sleepy lizard, while I counted the queer and inartistic old vases crowded in plumb and corresponding pairs on the shelf over the fireplace.
Miss Flipp, the other boarder, was in every respect a contrast to me, being small, young, and dressed with elaboration in a flimsy style which, off the stage, I have always scorned. Her wrists were laden with bangles, her fingers with rings, and her golden hair piled high in the most exaggerated of the exaggerated pompadour styles in vogue. Her appetite was indifferent; the expression of her eyes bespoke either ill-health or dissipation, and she was very abstracted, or as Mrs Clay put it--
"She acts like she had somethink on her mind. Maybe she's love-sick for some one she can't ketch, and she's been sent up here to forget."
This was after Miss Flipp had retreated to her room, and Carry continued the subject as she cleared the table.
"She says she's an orphan reared by a rich uncle; she's always blowing about him and how fond he is of her. She's just recovered from an operation and has come up here to get strong. That's why she does nothing, so she says, only poke about and read novels and make herself new hats and blouses; but I think she'd be lazy without any operation. She'd want another to put some go in her."
"She'd require inoculating with a little of yours," said I, watching with what enviable vigour the girl's work sped before her as though afraid. I also retired to my room for a rest, intending to come out and pave the way for friendship with Dawn by-and-by, for I quickly perceived she was not the character to go out of her way to make the first overture.
Some time after, when strolling around in an unwonted fashion, I was pleased to again encounter my friend Andrew. Evidently he had been set to clean out the fowl-houses, for a wheelbarrow half full of manure stood at the door of a wire-netted shed, and in the middle of this task he had sought diversion by shooting rats from among the straw in a big old barn, where a great heap of unused hay made them a harbour. In this warm valley, carpeted