A Daughter of the Morning

"Joe," I says, "did Keddie Bingy come back here?"

Joe wiped his hands on the cloth on his arm, and then brushed his mustache with it, and then wiped off the table with it.

"I don't know nothin' about K. Bingy," says Joe. "I t'run him out o' my place last night, neck and crop, for bein' drunk and disorderly. I ain't seen him since."

I looked up at Joe's little eyes. They looked like the eyes of the wolf in the picture in our dining-room. Joe's got a fat chin, and a fat smile, but his eyes don't match them.

"You coward and you brute," I says to him, "where did Keddie Bingy get drunk and disorderly?"

Joe begun to sputter and to step around in new places. The man I was with brought his hand down on the table.

"Never mind that," he says, "what you've to do is bring some breakfast. What will you have for your breakfast, mademoiselle?" he says to me.

"Why," I says, "some salt pork and some baking powder biscuit for me, and some fried potatoes and a piece of some kind of pie. What kind have you got?"

"Apple and raisin," says Joe, sulky. But the man I was with he says:

"Suppose you let me order our breakfast. Will you?"

"Suit yourself, I'm sure," says I. "I ain't used to the best."

The man thought a minute.

"Back there a little way," he says, "I crossed something that looked like a trout stream. Is it a trout stream?"

"Sure," says Joe and I together.

"How long," says the man, "would it take that boy there to bring in a small catch?"

"My!" I says, "he can do that quicker'n a cat can lick his eye. Can't he, Joe?"

"Very well," says the man. "We will have brook trout for breakfast. Make a lemon butter for them, please, and use good butter. With that bring us some toast, very thin, very brown and very hot, with more good butter. Have you some orange marmalade?"

"Sure," says Joe, "but it costs thirty cents a jar; I open the whole – "

"Some orange marmalade," says the man. "And coffee – I wonder what that good woman there would say to letting me make the coffee?"

"Her? She'll do whatever I tell her," says Joe. "But we charge extra when guests got to make their own coffee."

"And now," says the man, getting through with that, "what can you bring us while we wait? Some peaches?"

"The orchard," says Joe, "is rotten wid peaches."

"Good," says the man. "Now we understand each other. If mademoiselle will excuse me, we will set the coffee on its way."

I set and waited, thinking how funny it was for a man to make the coffee. All Pa ever done in his life to help about the cooking was to clean the fish.

I went and played with a kitten, so's not to have to talk to Joe. I didn't know what I might say to him. When I come back the table was laid with a nice clean cloth and napkins that were ironed good and dishes with little flowers on. When the woman come out to the well, I ask' her if I could pick some phlox for the table. She laughed and said yes, if I wanted to. So I got some, all pink. I was just bringing it when the man come back.

"Stand there, just for a minute," he says.

I done like he told me, by the door of the arbor. I thought he was going to say something nice, and I hoped I'd think of something smart and sassy to say back to him. But all he says was just:

"Thank you. Now, come and sit down, please."

We fixed the flowers. Then Joe brought a basket of beautiful peaches, and we took what we wanted. The man took one, and sat touching it with the tips of his fingers, and he looked over at me with a nice smile.

"And now, my child," he says, "tell me your name."

I always hate to tell folks my name. In the village they've always made fun of it.

"What do you want to bother with that for?" I says. "Ain't I good enough without a tag?"

He spoke almost sharp. "I want you to tell me your name," he says.

So I told him. "Cosma Wakely," I says.

He looked funny. "Really?" he says. "Cosma?"

"But everybody calls me 'Cossy,'" I says quick. "I know what a funny name it is. My grandmother named me. She was queer."

"Cossy!" he says over. "Why, Cosma is perfect."

"You're kiddin' me," I says. "Don't you think I don't know it."

He didn't say he wasn't.

"Ain't you going to tell me your name?" I says. "Not that I s'pose you'll tell me the right one. They never do."

"My name," he says, "is John Ember."

"On the square?" I asked him.

"Yes," he says. He was a funny man. He didn't have a bit of come-back. He took you just plain. He reminded me of the way I acted with Luke. But usually I could jolly like the dickens.

"You travel, I guess," I says. "What do you travel for?"

He laughed. "If I understand you," he said, "you are asking me what my line is?"

I nodded. I'd just put the pit in my mouth, so I couldn't guess something sassy, like pickles.

"I have no line," he says. "It's an area."

"Huh?" I says – on account of the pit.

"I travel," says he, "for the human race. But they don't know it."

"Sure," I says, when I had it swallowed, "you got to sell to everybody, I know that. But what do you sell 'em?"