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Updated: June 19, 2025
"I don't see what Minervy had to go and die for!" she complained, dodging a low-hanging branch of bloom-laden lilac. "She could wash the dishes and I'd wipe 'em and I s'pose there ain't a clean dish-towel in the house, either! Marthy's an awful slack housekeeper." Billy Louise, being a young person with a conscience of a sort washed the dishes, since she had given her word to do it.
She spoke again of Minervy, and the name brought back to Billy Louise poignant memories of her own lonely childhood and of her "pretend" playmate. Half shyly, because she was still sometimes touched with the inarticulateness of youth, Billy Louise told Marthy a little of that playmate.
Again and again she came up to the great house to "crave consolatiom" from Miss Peggy, or Mammy Lucy, though, truth to tell, Mammy's sympathies were not very deeply enlisted. Minervy Jones did not move in the same SOCIAL SET in which Mammy held a dignified position: Mammy was "an emerged Baptis'"; Minervy a "Shoutin' Mefodist," and a strong feeling existed between the two little colored churches.
She spent the entire morning in town, returning about three o'clock with a wagonful of purchases. Poor Joshua's remains were being looked after by the Society and would later come to Severndale. Mrs. Harold and the girls were sitting in the charming living-room when Jerome came to ask if Miss Peggy would speak with Minervy a moment. "Oh, DO bring her in here," begged Mrs. Harold.
“You’d better do nothing of the kind; you wouldn’t find it easy to replace them. Put up a little with their vagaries: this sort of thing only happens once a year.” “How do you know it won’t be something else just as ridiculous to-morrow? And that idiot of a Minervy; what do you suppose she told me when I insisted on her staying to wash up things?
His square, bristly, grim jaw hardened and stiffened, so dear to him were all his stubborn convictions and grizzly, ancient feuds. But he bestirred himself to cause information to be conveyed to Bruce Gilhooley of his son's whereabouts for he readily suspected that the family had fled to Minervy Sue's in Georgia.
Long ago, when Billy Louise was twelve or so, and lived largely in a dream world of her own with Minervy for her "pretend" playmate, she had one day chanced upon a paragraph in a paper that had come from town wrapped around a package of matches. It was all about Ward Warren. The name caught her fancy, and the text of the paragraph seized upon her imagination.
He called back to her: "I wouldn't 'a' cared so much if it hadn't 'a' been the what-not and them Minervy flowers. When a boy tips over a what-not he's goin' it purty strong." "Well don't be too severe. You'd better come now and git me a pail o' water ayes, I think ye had."
Polly and Peggy reentered Mrs. Harold's room. She had collapsed upon the divan, almost hysterical, and Polly looked as though someone had dashed cold water in her face. Peggy was the only one who accepted the situation philosophically. With a resigned expression she said: "THAT'S Minervy Jones. She is one type of her race. Mammy is another. Now we'll see what she'll buy.
"Why, do you know, every time I rode old Badger anywhere, after that day you told me about Minervy, I used to pretend that Minervy rode behind me. I used to talk to her by the hour and take her places. And up our canyon is a cave that I used to play was Minervy's cave. I had another one, and I used to go over and visit Minervy.
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