City and town life -- Fiction; Diary fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Love stories, American
"He'll _do_," mammy kept on, not paying any attention to what was told
her, like she always don't. "He must be all right, for bein' a frien'
o' Mr. Juliuses would pass 'im.' But, honey, he _is_ tolerable
_po_-faced, which ain't no good sign in marryin'. If thar's anybody
better experienced in that business than _me_ and King Solomon I'd
like to see the whites o' ther eyes; an' I tell you every time, if you
want to get a good-natured, wood-cuttin', baby-tendin' husban' choose
one that's _fat in the face_!"
A good many wedding presents commenced to coming in this morning,
which was a sign that the invitations got to the people all right. You
often hear of things being worth their weight in silver, but there's
_one_ thing you can count on it's being true about and that is wedding
invitations. You never saw such delighted people as Julius and
Marcella. They were laid out on tables in the parlor and greatly
admired.
"They're _ours_, dearest," he said, squeezing her hand right before
everybody, "yours and mine! Our Lares and Penates."
This greatly impressed me and I looked it up in the back of the
dictionary when I got home, which is a very useful place to find
strange words. It said: "Lares et Penates, household gods," which
didn't make sense, so I knew the dictionary man must have made a
mistake and meant to say household _goods_.
"Gentle-_men_!" said Mammy Lou when I told the words to her, "if he
thinks up such names as _them_ for his fu'niture what _will_ he do
when he gets to his chil'en?"
This remark seemed to put an idea into her head, for Lovie, mammy's
other daughter besides Dilsey, has got a pair of two little twins that
have been going around for the last five years in need of a name just
because Mammy Lou and Ike, their father, can't ever agree on one--a
name nor anything else.
"Them's the very names for the little angels," Mammy said, washing
the dinner dishes deep in thought, "for the twins bein' boys and girls
and the names bein' able to accommodate therselves to ary sect proves
that they're the _very thing_." She studied over it for a good while,
I guess on account of Ike, although mammy is usually what she calls
very plain-spoken with him. A plain-spoken person is one that says
nasty things to your face and expects you not to get mad. When they
say them behind your back they're "diplomatic." But finally she
started off to name them, and, having had so much trouble already with
Ike, I saw her slip her heavy-soled slippers into her pocket before
she started. She stayed away a long, long time, but when she got back
she held her head so high and acted so stuck-up that I just knew she
had got to use both the names and the slippers.
"Did you name 'em?" I asked her, going to the kitchen to get some
tea-cakes, supper being very late.
"_Did I?_" she answered back, cutting out the biscuits with a haughty
look, "you just oughter a _saw_ me namin' 'em!"
"Which did you name which?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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