THE SCOUT MASTER
373
in
his
dress as well. He paid the taxi driver over Aunt Grace's protests
and summoned a negro red-cap to take all the luggage. Brother and
I followed them into the station.
We followed them under the high, vaulted ceiling of the lobby
and into the station yard. All the while Aunt Grace's laughter could
be heard above the hum of people whom, one and all, I imagined to
be taking their final farewell of one another. When we were in the
station yard her laughter seemed to reach even a higher pitch.
Finally we were waiting beside the sleeping car into which the
redcap had taken Aunt Grace's luggage. Brother and I studied the
black wheels and the oily brakes underneath the car. The conductor
in blue called, "Ullaboward." I looked up and saw Uncle Bazil
speaking with an expression on his face that was half serious and half
playful. Aunt Grace stopped laughing just long enough to say some–
thing that made him blush. She told him not to tell her
that,
because
it made her too, too unhappy. Then she turned from him to us and
stooping down she put her arms around Brother and myself and
kissed us again and again. "Put these two rascals on the streetcar, will
you, Bazil?"
When she stepped into the dark vestibule of the sleeping car I
saw a bit of the lace that hemmed her "slip" showing from beneath
her blue skirt. I felt that it was more like the wide lace on Mother's
pettycoats than the little strips on Virginia Ann's. The train began
to move, and she was still in the vestibule looking over the conductor's
shoulder. Presently she began to laugh as she waved to us. I suddenly
turned my face so as not to see the enormous spread of her smile, but
for several seconds it seemed that I could hear the sound of her
strange, high laughter above the noise and commotion of the train.
Uncle Jake used afterwards to repeat the witty things that Aunt
Grace had said when she was staying with us. Often times when the
clock on the mantel of the upstairs sitting room chimed he would
remind the other members of the family - sometimes only with a
smile- of what Grace used to say about the qu arter-hourly chiming.
"Remember what Grace used to say, 'I'd as soon have someone come
and knock on my door every fifteen minutes of the night and say,
'Fifteen minutes have pa.."5ed,' as have that clock in a house of mine.' "
He would talk about what a happy nature Aunt Grace had.
Whenever Mother said that she worried about how Aunt Grace was
getting on in Birmingham with her new job, he would say that Aunt
Grace would always be happy, that she was one of those fortunate peo–
ple who have a special faculty for happiness. He would sometimes re-
