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Updated: May 16, 2025
Uncle Ethan was mending his old violin, with many York State "dums!" and "I gal darns!" totally oblivious of his tireless old wife, who, having "finished the supper dishes," sat knitting a stocking, evidently for the little grandson who lay before the stove like a cat.
The miller and his wife often tried to coax from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little garden behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a peculiar delight and interest. It may have been that she perceived in "Dums" a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite flowers.
When he began the song she stretched out her arms to him; her lips moved; she called to him in dreamy tones: "Da-da, come take Dums home!" Miss Phoebe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been well done. The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his arms.
Keeler, who had apparently forgotten his passenger altogether, broke into song, "She's my darlin' hanky-panky And she wears a number two, Her father keeps a barber shop Way out in Kalamazoo." He sang the foregoing twice over and then added a chorus, plainly improvised, made up of "Di doos" and "Di dums" ad lib.
That was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but the mountaineers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had encountered it somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her babyhood Aglaia herself repudiated the name, as far as common use went, and persisted in calling herself "Dums."
They sang it with a woful lack of its own original lines; they put in string on string of "dum te dums," but it came from their better natures and it sanctified the dingy shop. When it was ended, which was not until it had gone through persistent repetitions, old Jim was prepared for almost anything.
Oh, I suppose you can't call it being ill, because it wasn't Humpty Dums, or Winkey Wanks, or Grim Fever; but I thought you were going to die, old chap, or do some other mean and shabby thing. I say, how do you feel?" "All right, only I thought you had something the matter with you." "Me? Why?" "You were groaning so when I woke up." "Groaning? Why, I was singing," cried Bob, indignantly.
Playee, playee, playee?" holding out her arms, and calling out, "Dido Dums, Dido Dums, come here, deary," when a fine Persian cat jumped on to her right shoulder. "Now Diddles Doddles, Diddles Doddles," and another Persian cat jumped on to her left shoulder. "Tootsy Wootsy," she called once more, and a black cat scrambled up to the crown of the poke bonnet.
Then Aglaia would run to him laughing, and call: "Da-da, come take Dums home;" and the miller would swing her to his shoulder and march over to supper, singing the miller's song. Every evening this would take place. One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared. When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in front of the cottage.
But whenever Abram Strong sat in the melancholy September afternoons on the spot where "Dums" used to run in every day with her yellow curls flying, the smile that Lakelands always saw upon his face was not there. The miller made his way slowly up the winding, steep road. The trees crowded so close to the edge of it that he walked in their shade, with his hat in his hand.
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