"I don't need to," answered the more self-contained Sister Pike, "she
knows how I'm a-rejoicing for her. Just look at Mr. Hoover and Ez Pike
a-grinning acrost the street at her and here do come the Squire and
Mis' Tutt walking along together for the first time I almost ever seed
'em."
"Wheeuh," wheezed the Squire, "I done come up here to give up on the
subject of that Tom Mayberry! He don't look or talk like he have got
any sense, girl, but he are the greatest doctor anywhere from Harpeth
Hills to Californy or Alasky. He have got good remedies for all. I
reckon you are one of the hot water kind, but he can give bitters too.
You'd better keep him to the bitters though for safety."
"There now! You all have done heard the top testimony for Tom
Mayberry," exclaimed Mother, fairly running over with joy.
"Glory!" was the one word that rose to the surface of Mrs. Tutt's
emotions, but it expressed her state of beatitude and caused the Squire
to peer at her with uneasiness as if expecting an outburst of
exhortation on the next breath. Mrs. Peavey's experienced eye also
caught the threatened downpour and she hastened to admonish the group
of women.
"Sakes, you all!" she exclaimed, untying the strings of her bonnet
energetically, "they won't be a supper cooked on the Road if we don't
go get about it. A snack dinner were give the men and such always calls
for the putting on of the big pot and the little kettle for supper.
Miss Elinory will be here for you all to eat up to-morrow morning,
'lessen something happens to her in the night, like a wind storm. Go on
everybody!"
"Oh," exclaimed Mother Mayberry, as she stood on the top step looking
down at them all, "look how the sun have come out on us all, with its
happiness after the sorrow we have known this day. I thank you, one and
all, for your feeling with me and my daughter Elinory. The rejoicing of
friends are a soft wind to folks' spirit wings and we're all flying
high this night. Get the children bedded down early, for they have had
a long day and need good sleep. Bettie, let Mis' Tutt walk along with
you and the Squire can come on slow. Don't nobody forget that it are
Sewing Circle with Mis' Mosbey to-morrow."
And, with more congratulations to the singer lady, laughs with Mother
Mayberry, and the return of a shot or two with Mrs. Peavey, the happy
country women dispersed to their own roof trees. The sorrow that had
come they had endured for the night and now they were ready to rise up
and meet joy for the morning. In the children of nature the emotions
maintain their elemental balance and their sense of the proportions of
life is instinctively true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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