out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke — pretty fair. Here he is, Polly! Washington’s come, children! come now, don’t eat him up — finish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I’ve had a chance to put him into a good thing I’ve done it, and done it pretty cheerfully, too. I put him into that sugar speculation — what a grand thing that was, if we hadn’t held on too long!”
True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them; and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to lose before, for Sellers’s sale of their mule crop that year in New Orleans had been a great financial success. If he had kept out of sugar and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stone — that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg — which is but a figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see Uncle Dan’l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into banishment.
Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about each other’s waists.
The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing, although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long service. The Colonel’s “stovepipe” hat was napless and shiny with much polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied with itself and blandly sorry for other people’s clothes. It was growing rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers said:
“Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make yourself at home — just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy — I’ll have a fire going, in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and let’s have things cheerful — just as glad to see you, Washington, as if you’d been lost a century and we’d found you again!”
By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow. Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into close companionship.
The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel’s voice worked its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption; and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being refreshed with the bread of life. Bye and bye the children quieted down to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the spheres.
A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove — these things constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor; on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the house — but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in company the rest of the way home.
“Remarkable clock!” said Sellers, and got up and wound it. “I’ve been offered — well, I wouldn’t expect you to believe what I’ve been offered for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, ‘Come, now, Colonel, name your price — I must have that clock!’ But my goodness I’d as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to — silence in the court, now, she’s begun to strike! You can’t talk against her — you have to just be patient and hold up till she’s said her say. Ah well, as I was saying, when — she’s beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twen — — ah, that’s all. — Yes, as I was saying to old Judge — — go it, old girl, don’t mind me. — Now how is that? — — isn’t that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She’ll strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping, — you’ll see. There ain’t another clock like that in Christendom.”
Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting — though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the clock “buckled down to her work” as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:
“It belonged to his grandmother.”
The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at the moment:)
“Indeed!”
“Yes, it did, didn’t it father!” exclaimed one of the twins. “She was my great-grandmother — and George’s too; wasn’t she, father! You never saw her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn’t you, Sis! Sis has seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deef — she’s dead now. Ain’t she, father!”
All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel of information about deceased — nobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any way — but the head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own against the field:
“It’s our clock, now — and it’s got wheels inside of it, and a thing that flutters every time she strikes — don’t it, father! Great-grandmother died before hardly any of us was born — she was an Old-School Baptist and had warts all over her — you ask father if she didn’t. She had an uncle once that was baldheaded and used to have fits; he wasn’t our uncle, I don’t know what he was to us — some kin or another I reckon — father’s seen him a thousand times — hain’t you, father! We used to have a calf that et apples and just chawed up dishrags like nothing, and if you stay here you’ll see lots of funerals — won’t he, Sis! Did you ever see a house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry — — ”
But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He began to tell about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital in — a speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with him about — and soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the cold entirely.
He was nearly as close to the stove as he could get, and yet he could not persuade himself that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass’ door was still gently and serenely glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove,
