Elizabeth, Her Folks — Text and Context

She had never seen an oriole except in pictures, but that was one of the things she had wanted to come to Cape Cod for, when she had thought she was coming with her mother and her big soldier brother to a cottage on the beach, before they had realized how sick he was going to be when he got home from France. The bird chirped drowsily once more, and the insect in the grass drew its string over its bow again. She almost went to the window to look, but she had cried so long that she wasn't quite willing to think of pleasant things yet. Her head ached and her nose was sore, and the second pillow was almost as wet as the first. She hung them both over the foot-board to dry.

"I suppose it is a little funny to cry quarts into old family goose-feather pillows. I might have cried so long I would have had to use a whole feather-bed, too. I wonder if Grandmother would scold me just as if I were a child. I told her I was going to have my fourteenth birthday here. I told my horrid grandfather, when he pinched me, that I wasn't in the habit of being teased. What would Jean Forsyth say if she could see me now? I guess I'll get up and put some talcum powder on my nose."

There was a knock on the door as she began to move around the room. She scrambled back into bed meaning to pretend to be asleep, but her grandmother opened the door and came in just as if she had spoken.

"Are you asleep, Elizabeth?"

"I thought you might like a glass o' milk to kinder stay your stomach between now and breakfast."

"Thank you, Grandma."

"Would you like a cookie to go with it? I made up a whole jar full o' sugar-molasses cookies so's you could go and help yourself to them whenever you was a mind to. I'll set the milk right here on the stand, and then I'll go fetch the cookie."

"Thank you for the milk, Grandmother, but I don't care for the cookie. I never eat between meals."

"Your grandfather and I had a little spell o' argument about that cookie. He claimed you wouldn't be used to eating sugar-molasses cookies, but I thought you might of inherited your father's taste for them."

"I have inherited a great many of Father's tastes."

"Your brother Johnny, he used to like 'em, too, when he was a little feller. He was a real good little boy, Johnny was. He spent every summer of his life with me and Grandpa till he began to go to that college."

"We don't called him Johnny. We called him Junior when he was growing up, and I called him Buddy, but now we call him John--or John Junior when we wish to distinguish him from Father."

"Well, your grandfather and I always called him Johnny. It seemed to suit him. I hope he'll get well enough to get down to Gran'ma's before the summer is over. Gran'ma could help him to get well."

"He is quite sick now, and unable to see any one at all. He is very devoted to me, but he is in such a weakened condition that even I wasn't allowed to see him. He won the D. S. C.--the Distinguished Service Cross, you know."

"I don't know so much about this new-fangled soldiering. I lost two brothers in the Civil War--your great uncles they would have been. Only eighteen and twenty, but grown men they seemed to be in them days. Your father favoured my brother William more'n he did anybody on his father's side o' the house. Johnny, he looked like Sam when he was a little feller. Well, I'm real glad Johnny got home safe."

"Of course, we can't be sure that he is safe yet, but the recent reports have been very encouraging."

"Your father's proud of his boy, I guess. It was a great thing for him to have a grown boy to go. The next best thing to going himself."

"I don't think he cared about going himself."

"Did he ever say anything about not caring to go?"

"I don't think I ever heard him express himself on the subject; but the work he was doing here, of course, was very important. Anybody who was connected with steel production in any way felt that they were being a great deal more useful on this side of the ocean."

"Whatever your father was doing on this side of the ocean, I guess his soul and his spirit was all the way across it."

"I think you are mistaken, Grandmother."