"Go take them clothes off, nigger, and put 'em along of my black silk
shroud in the bottom drawer of the chist," she commanded, as she put her
hands on her sixty-inch waist and stood before him with arms akimbo.
"Folks is got no business to dress in life so fine that they shames they
burying clothes."
"Shoo fly, I'm jest going to Washington, not to Heaven, in this here
rig. When I git into Heaven it'll be 'cause I'm hiding behind that
black silk skirt of your shroud, honey, if I'm as naked as borned," was
the admiring, wily and also wholly sincere answer to Mammy's fling at
the gorgeous raiment.
And while the Poplars teemed with wedding plans Nickols kept the whole
village steamed up to be in readiness for the visit of Mr. Jeffries,
which was dated for just a week before the wedding, and the village
festival at the opening of the new school was to be the most important
ceremonial of the whole visit. Father was to give him a dinner at which
all of the Solons of the Harpeth Valley were to be present, and a ball
at the Country Club was being planned by Billy with all enthusiasm. But
the center of the buzz was down at Mother Spurlock's Little House, where
Mr. Goodloe daily, and it seemed almost hourly, drilled the children for
the ceremonial of the opening of their house of learning across the way
from the Little House by the Road. Only echoes of the orgies reached the
outside, and gossip ran high in the Settlement as well as the Town at
the fragments that the delighted scions brought home, of curious folk
dances mixed with fragments of weird tunes.
"Sure, a minister of the gospel to teach me Mikey to stand on one leg
and spin around on the other with his hands over his head is a quare
thing, but the Riverend Goodloe is no ordinary man," said Mrs. Burns to
Mother Spurlock, who answered: "You can trust him, Mrs. Burns, even with Mikey's legs."
And during all the long weeks of activity not once did I have a word
alone with the Harpeth Jaguar. We met constantly at dinner at the tables
of our friends and he came and went at the Poplars with the same freedom
that Nickols enjoyed. He was long hours in the library with father, and
somehow I felt that he was strengthening the structure that he had
builded on the ruined foundation and something passionate rose in my
heart and filled it with pain every time I heard his ringing laugh come
from the library table, accompanied by father's booming chuckle. Also,
he worked early and late in the garden with Nickols and the young man
from White Plains, and I saw that Nickols' artistic ideas flowed at top
speed when Gregory Goodloe was standing by.