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Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 12. Mammy June |
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_ CHAPTER XII. MAMMY JUNE From the very beginning, although they said nothing about it even to each other, the six little Bunkers found the three little Armatages "funny." "Funny" is a word that may mean much or little, and often the very opposite of humorous. In this case the visitors from the North did not understand Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior. They were not like any boys and girls whom the Bunkers had ever known before. Phillis was twelve--quite a "grown up young lady" she seemed to consider herself. Yet she broke out now and then in wild, tomboyish activities, racing with Russ and Frane, Junior, climbing fences and trees, and riding horses bareback in the home lot. It seemed as though Phil, as they called her, "held in" just as long as she could, trying to put on the airs of grown-ups, and then just had to break out. "If you tell mother I did this I'll wish a ha'nt after you!" she would say to her brother, who was the age of Vi and Laddie, and her sister Alice, who was two years younger than herself, but no bigger than Rose. Alice had a very low, sweet, contralto voice, like Mrs. Armatage, and a very demure manner. Rose became friendly with Alice almost at once. And the way they treated the colored children of their own age and older was just as strange as anything else about the three Armatages. They petted and quarreled with them; they expected all kinds of service from them; and they were on their part, constantly doing things for the children of "the quarters" and giving them presents. Wherever the white children went about the plantation there was sure to be a crowd of colored boys and girls tagging them. After the first day Mother Bunker was reassured that nothing could happen to her brood, because there were so many of the colored men about the grounds to look after them. As in the house, a black or brown face, broadly a-smile, was likely to appear almost anywhere. The quarters, as the cabins occupied by the colored people were called, were not far from the house, but not in sight of it. Even the kitchen was in a separate house, back of the big house. After bedtime there was not a servant left in the big house unless somebody was sick. "Mammy used to live here," Mrs. Armatage explained, in her languid voice, "while the children were small. I couldn't have got along without mammy. She was my mammy too. But she's too old to be of much use now, and Frane has pensioned her. She has her own little house and plot of ground and if her boy--her youngest boy--had stayed with her, mammy would get along all right. She worries about that boy." The Bunker children did not understand much about this until, on the second day after their arrival, Phillis said: "I'm going down to see mammy. Want to come?" "Is--isn't your mammy here at home?" asked Vi. "Dora Blunt calls her mother 'mammy'; but we don't." "I've got a mother and a mammy too," explained the oldest Armatage girl. "You-all come on and see her. She'll be glad to see you folks from the North. She will ask you if you've seen her Ebenezer, for he went up North. We used to all call him 'Sneezer,' and it made him awfully mad." "Didn't he have any better name?" asked Russ. "His full name is Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. Of course, their name isn't really Meiggs, like the plantation; but the darkies often take the names of the places where they were born. Sneezer was a real nice boy." "He isn't dead, is he?" asked Russ. "Reckon not," said Phillis. "But Mammy June is awful' worried about him. She hasn't heard from him now for more than a year. So she doesn't know what to think." "But she has got other folks, hasn't she?" Rose asked. "You'd think so! Grandchildren by the score," replied the older Armatage girl, laughing. "Sneezer had lots of older brothers and sisters, and they most all have married and live about here and have big families. The grandchildren are running in and out of mammy's cabin all the time. I have to chase 'em out with a broom sometimes when I go down there. And they eat her pretty near up alive!" Even the smaller Bunkers knew that this was a figure of speech. The grandchildren did not actually eat Mammy June, although they might clean her cupboard as bare as that of Old Mother Hubbard. They followed a winding, grass-grown cart path for nearly half a mile before coming to Mammy June's house. The way was sloping to the border of a "branch" or small stream--a very pretty brook indeed that burbled over stones in some places and then had long stretches of quiet pools where Frane, Junior, told Russ and Laddie that there were many fish--"big fellows." "I'll get a string and a bent pin and fish for them," said Laddie confidently. "I fished that way in the brook at Pineville." "Huh!" said Frane Armatage, Junior, in scorn. "One of these fish here would swallow your pin and line and haul you in." "Oh!" gasped Vi, with big eyes. "What for?" "No, the fish wouldn't!" declared Laddie promptly. "Yes, it would. And swallow you, too." "No, the fish wouldn't," repeated Laddie, "for I'd let go just as soon as it began to tug." "Smartie!" said Phillis to her brother. "You can't fool these Bunker boys. Let Laddie alone." Of course the troop of white children, walking down the cart path to Mammy June's, was followed by a troop of colored children. The latter sang and romped and chased about the bordering woods like puppies out for a rample. Sometimes they danced. "Can you cut a pigeon wing?" Russ asked one of the older lads. "I want to learn to do that." "No, I can't do that. Not good. We've got some dancers over at the quarters that does it right well," was the reply. "You ought to've seen Sneezer do it!" cried another of the colored children. "Sneezer could do it fine. Couldn't he, Miss Phil?" "Sneezer was a great dancer," admitted the oldest Armatage girl. "Come on, now, Bunkers, and see Mammy June. Keep away from this cabin," she added to the colored children, "or I'll call a ha'nt out of the swamp to chase you." "I wonder what those 'ha'nts' are, Russ," whispered Rose to her brother. "Do they have feathers? Or don't they fly? They must run pretty fast, for Phil is always saying she will make one chase folks." "I asked Daddy. There isn't any such thing. It's like we say 'ghosts.'" "Oh! At Hallowe'en? When we dress up in sheets and things?" "Yes. Maybe these colored children believe in ghosts. But of course we don't!" "No-o," said Rose thoughtfully. "Just the same I wouldn't like to think of ha'nts if I was alone in the woods at night. Would you, Russ?" Russ dodged that question. He said: "I don't mean to be alone in the woods around here at night. And neither do you, Rose Bunker." Of course neither of them had the least idea what was going to happen to them before they started North from the Meiggs Plantation. Mammy June's cabin was of white-washed logs, with vines climbing about the door that were leafless now but very thrifty looking. There were fig trees that made a background and a windbreak for the little house, and a huge magnolia tree stood not far from the cabin. The front door opened upon a roofed porch, and an old colored woman of ample size, in a starched and flowered gingham dress and with a white turban on her head, was rocking in a big arm chair on this porch when the children appeared. "Lawsy me!" she exclaimed, smiling broadly to show firm white teeth in spite of her age. "Is this yere a celebration or is it a parade? Miss Philly, you got a smooch on dat waist, and your skirt is hiked up behind. I declar' I believe you've lost a button." "Why, so I have, Mammy June," answered Phillis. "And more than one. Nobody has time to keep buttons sewed on up at the house, now that you're not there." "Shiftless, no-count critters, dem gals up dere. Sho, honey! who is all dese lil' white children?" "Bunkers," explained Frane, Junior. "What's dem?" asked Mammy June, apparently puzzled. "Is dey to play with, or is dey to eat? Bunkers! Lawsy!" Rose giggled delightedly. "They are to play with," laughed Alice suddenly. "That is what they are for, Mammy June." "You see you play pretty with them, then," said the old woman, shaking her head and speaking admonishingly. Rose and Russ Bunker at least began to understand that this pleasant old colored woman had had the chief care of the three young Armatages while they were little. Perhaps she had trained them quite as much as their mother and father. And they seemed to love Mammy June accordingly. That the old woman loved little folks and knew how to make friends with them was soon apparent. She had Mun Bun and Margy both together in her ample lap while Laddie and Vi leaned against her and listened to the tale she was telling the little folks. Phillis and Alice meanwhile showed Rose the interior of the cabin and all its comforts and wonders. Meanwhile Frane, Junior, took Russ down to the stream with some of the colored children to show him some of the big fish he had threatened Laddie with. Here it was that Russ Bunker engaged in his first adventure at the Meiggs Plantation. _ |
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