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"She can't help making them, and a good deal more besides; for Romanzo Caukins, our neighbor's son, and Octavius Buzzby, my aunt's chargé d'affaires, are at the present time her abject slaves," said Champney, rising from the table at a signal from his mother. "Let's go out on the porch, and I'll tell you of the fun I've had with her poor Roman!" He shook his head and chuckled.
In the Stream Mrs. Milton Caukins had her trials, but they were of a kind some people would call "blessed torments." The middle-aged mother of eight children, six boys, of whom Romanzo was the eldest, and twin girls, Elvira Caukins might with justice lay claim to a superabundance of a certain kind of trial. Every Sunday morning proved the crux of her experience, and Mrs.
"I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my information from Mrs. Caukins." At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority, mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one minute." "Why?"
He ain't Romanzo Caukins Roman's home made; but t'other is a foreigner; they're different." "Oh, don't preach, Octavius." She always called him by his unabbreviated name when she was irritated. "I like well enough to sing with Luigi, and go rowing with him, and play tennis, and have the good times, but it's nonsense for you to think he means anything serious.
"Oh, don't don't! I can't bear it dear old Tave " he groaned rather than spoke; the blood mounted to his temples, but his friend proved merciless. "And there's Luigi Poggi! I don't know but he will make you a proposition, when he knows you are at home, to enter into partnership with him and young Caukins the Colonel's fourth eldest. Champney, he wants to atone he has told me so "
Among them was Colonel Milton Caukins, tax collector and assistant deputy sheriff who, never quite at ease in the presence of his long-tongued wife, expanded discursively so soon as he found himself in the office of The Greenbush. He was in full flow when Octavius entered.
The girl busied herself with setting the table and preparing tea, Mrs. Caukins, meanwhile, rocking comfortably in her chair and easing her heart of its heavy burden by continual drippings of talk after the main flow of her tale was exhausted. Presently, just after sunset, the twins came rushing in.
It was always with old Joel Quimber: "When Champ gits back, we'll hev what ye might call the head of a fam'ly agin." Octavius Buzzby spent hours in telling her of the boy's comings and goings and doings at Champ-au-Haut, and the love Louis Champney bore him. Romanzo Caukins set him on the pedestal of his boyish enthusiasm.
Octavius, observing this, groaned in spirit, and henceforth held his tongue when he heard the girl carolling her Irish love songs in the presence of the ingenuous Caukins. After this, the girl's exuberance of spirits and the sustaining inner life of the imagination helped her wonderfully during the three following years of patient waiting on a confirmed invalid. Of late, Mrs.
The Club's membership, of both young and old men, is large and increasing with the growth of the town; but the old frequenters of The Greenbush bar-room head the list Colonel Caukins and Octavius Buzzby paying the annual dues of their first charter member, old Joel Quimber, now in his eighty-seventh year.
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