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"Wait till I have given some directions to Zibbie, and I will read you a fairy story, and then you can go up into the garret until dinner- time." "May I listen to the fairy story also?" asked Walter. Miss Walton looked up with a smile and said, "You must be half- desperate from your imprisonment to accept of such solace.
"It must be a great trial to your feelings," said Miss Walton, laughing; "but what would you have us do with them, Zibbie? You don't need them all for pets." Before Zibbie could answer, an old gentleman in a low buggy drove into the large door-yard, and the children bounded toward him, screaming, "Grandpa." A colored man took the horse, and Mr.
Miss Susie went on inexorably, "That worthless Zibbie Tuttle has been tearing all my good linen and lace to pieces for the past three weeks. And now I suppose I'll have to put up with her for a few weeks longer." "Yas'm," Zenie replied weakly. "However" Miss Susie pronounced it as though it were one syllable "I suppose I can't help it. What is it? Boy or girl?"
He, too, had suffered sorely in the storm he had helped to raise the preceding day, and had tremblingly eaten such dinner as the irate Zibbie had tossed on the table for him, as a man might lunch in the vicinity of a bombshell. He seemed to relieve himself by saying, with his characteristic grin, as he replenished the fire, "It was dreadful 'pestuous yesterday, but de winds is gone down.
This impression was confirmed when the children came tearing through the main hall past the parlor to the dining-room opposite, which they entered, leaving the door open. Annie was there preparing the dessert. Country house-keepers can rarely leave these matters to rural cooks, and Zibbie could be trusted to sweeten nothing that day.
"There's Zibbie," she thought; "I'll teach her one lesson;" and she went to the kitchen and discharged the old servant on the spot. Zibbie was in such a reckless state of passion that she didn't care if the world came to an end. The only comfort Annie got in this direction was a volley of impudence. "I hod discharged mesel' afore ye spoke," said the irate dame.
Susie clung timidly to her aunty's side as they passed through these clamorous candidates for holiday honors, and the young lady said, kindly, "You have a large family to look after, Zibbie, but I'm afraid we'll lessen it every day now." "Indeed, an' ye will, and it goes agin the grain to wring the necks of them that I've nursed from the shell," said the old woman, rather sharply.
Zibbie, bring hot water." Again she poured a teaspoonful of brandy into his mouth, and this time he seemed to swallow it. She bathed his face and hands with spirits, while her every breath was a prayer. Miss Eulie did not want a long explanation. Annie's hurried words, "A ladder fell on him," satisfied her, and she set to work, and more effectively with her riper experience.
Walton gave him his arm, and in a few moments he was on the sofa in the sitting-room, where a fire was soon kindled. Zibbie was told to make coffee, and to provide something more substantial.
When she took up or laid down any utensil, it was in a way that bade fair to reduce the kitchen to chaos before night. Jeff had "got his back up" also about the hen, and was as stupid and sullen as only Jeff knew how to be; and even quiet Hannah was almost driven to frenzy by Zibbie reproaching her for being everything under heaven that she knew she was not.
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