Roxy

“ Miss Roxy, especially, is the typical old maid of Yankee-land, and is so thoroughly lovable, in spite of her idiom, her crusty manners, and her eccentricities, that the only wonder is that she should have been allowed to remain single. ”

“ Jean answered, sitting on the rug before the fire, her hands clasped around her knees, kiddie fashion, in spite of her seventeen years, "but it warms the cockles of your heart to watch an open fire. Don't you think so, Cousin Roxy?"
Cousin Roxana sat in the low willow rocker, placidly knitting on a counterpane square of old-fashioned filet.
"We must all hope for the best," she said, beaming at the anxious faces. "Helen, for pity's sake stop that silent drizzling. If it should be the will of the Lord that your blessed father be taken, it isn't right for us to rebel and take on so, is it? ”

“ Cousin Roxy waved to them and smiled.
"Come here," she called. "Yes, that tallest boy. 'Most twelve, aren't you, son? Old enough to hitch a horse. What's your name?"
"Yahn," answered the boy shyly.
"Yahn? Guess that's Johnnie in plain American, isn't it?" She jumped to the ground as nimbly as any girl, and handed him the hitch rope. "Doctor got over yet?"
Johnnie shook his head sadly, and the youngest girl broke suddenly into frantic, half-stifled sobbing.
"There's your work cut out for you, Jean," Roxana said briskly. "You amuse these children while your Mother and I go into the house." ”

“ I held him while she made Lovelace Peyton put his finger down in the bill and pull up the wad he had been trying to push down.
"That old rooster have got rheumatiz, Roxy, and now he'll die with no pill for it," said Lovelace, as he worked his dirty little finger down after the mud and bread; but he got it out and the poor old chicken hopped off with all his feathers ruffled up and stretching his neck as if to try it.
"Oh, Lovey, please don't kill the chickens," Roxanne said in a tone of real pleading.
"I don't never kill nothing, Roxy," he answered indignantly. ”

“ Roxy’s mother would have been awfully shocked at the wavy, flowing hair of you Wide Awake girls, I assure you!
And Roxy’s dress. You never saw a “tow and linen” dress, I dare say. Roxy’s dresses were all 051“home-made”—not merely cut and sewed at home; but Roxy’s father raised the flax in the field north of the house, and Roxy’s mother spun the flax and tow into thread upon funny little wheels. ”

“ The instinct that no one could help her but herself kept her silent when she retired with Roxy to the loft-chamber. Primitive life on Beaver Island settled to its rest soon after the birds, and there was not a sound outside of nature's stirrings till morning, unless some drunken fishermen trailed down the Galilee road to see what might be inflicted on the property of sleeping Mormons.
The northern air blew fresh through gable windows of the attic, yet Emeline turned restlessly on her straw bed, and counted the dim rafters while Roxy slept. ”

“ Even when school began, she had to work still. Miss Roxy was determined to send a big box of double-knit mittens to John Jackson before winter set in; and as fast as they were finished they were dampened, pressed, and laid away in the old hair trunk in the garret where Nancy slept.
Poor little girl! she hated the sight of mittens, and this summer a wild wish came into her head, that grew and grew, as she sat alone at her knitting, until it quite filled head and heart too. ”

“ Kittredge would have said, which did not become epidemic. People were very solemn as yet, many of them being new to such splendid scenes, and crushed, as it were, in the presence of so much crockery and so many silver spoons, and such a variety of unusual viands and beverages. When the laugh rose around Roxy and her saucy beau, several looked in that direction with an anxious expression, as if something had happened, a lady fainted, for instance, or a couple of lively fellows come to high words.
“Young folks will be young folks,” said Deacon Soper. ”

“ I have seen purty little Roxy grow up from a chile, an' as she begin to round up and git tall, says I: 'Nigger or no nigger, she's angel!' The white gals they all throwed off on me, caze I wasn't earnin' nothin', an' I sot my eyes on Roxy Custis an' I says: 'What kin I do fur to make her shine to me?' So I kept a-follerin' of her everywhere, an' I see her one day comin' along the road a-pickin' of the wild blossoms an' with her han' full of 'em, an' I says: 'Roxy, what you doin' of with them flowers?' 'They're fur my missis, Miss Vesty,' says she ”

“ Helen sped up after Cousin Roxana, and presently she came bustling downstairs, flushed and efficient.
"Why, Elizabeth Ann," she cried, smoothing back her hair just as if she had been one of the girls. "Don't give way just when your strength should be tried and true."
"Please call me Betty," protested Mrs. Robbins, smiling even through her tears. "It sounds so formal for you to call me Elizabeth Ann. It always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders, Roxy." ”

“ As Roxanne asked the question she was trembling all over, but not in the deadly cold way I was, I felt sure. She couldn't have stood it and lived.
"Some one has been in the shed, taken samples of all my material, including the steel shavings that came from the last melting, and my notebook is gone. The process is stolen, Roxy, and all the sacrifices gone for nothing. I don't care for myself—but—you." His head was up in the same old portrait pose, but his arms trembled as he held them out to Roxanne. ”

“ Roxy was a little the shorter and fuller of shape, the milder and more pathetic; in Virgie the white race had left its leaner lines and greater unrelenting. She said to Samson, with the pique her reflections inspired,
"I never thought the first man to make love to me would be as black as you."
"De white corn years," says Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller wouldn't suit you, Virgie."
"Why?" says Roxy, "Virgie was raised among white children; so was I. We didn't know any difference till we grew up." ”

“ Kit answered. "You come too, please, Cousin Roxy. We need you fearfully to tell us what to do next."
"No, you don't," said Cousin Roxana calmly. "You don't need me any more than the earth needs me to tell it this snow's going away and the flowers will soon be blossoming. Just trust in the Lord, child. 'It may not be my way, and it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way, the Lord will provide.' It's one thing to stand in the choir and sing that, and it's another to live up to it. The first thing you girls must do is learn how to meet your father with a smile." ”

“ This, dear boy, is why your father and uncles have gone to fight, and why they do stay and fight, though God knows what they suffer, and—” and the large blue eyes of the mother were full of tears; yet a strong, bright beam of pride and exultation shone through those tears.
“Well, well, Roxy, you can always talk, every-body knows,” said Aunt Hitty, who had been not the least attentive listener of this little patriotic harangue; “but, you see, the tea is getting cold, and yonder I see the sleigh is at the door, and John’s come,—so let’s set up our chairs for supper.” ”

“ Roxy can't show her resentment, but her friends can. I'm a friend."
Belle uses words and talks like a grown person in a really wonderful way. She is the smartest girl in the rhetoric class and, of course, she knows more than most people, and Mamie Sue realizes that. So do I. I saw just how they all felt about me, and I don't blame them—but I just wish every time Roxanne Byrd smiles at me that I didn't have to make myself stop and remember that she does it because she has to. ”

“ To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen 33 parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. ”

“ I think the more one has to divide their interests and sympathies, the more it comes back to them in strength. Cousin Roxy said that to me once, and I liked it. She said no human beings should have all their eggs in one nest, but make a beautiful omelet of them for the feeding of the multitude. Isn’t that good?”
Carlota had not seen Cousin Roxy yet. ”

“ The Bible says that it is harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a knitting-needle to stick into a camel, because he and it are blunt, I suppose; and it must be just the same with such a rich girl. Poor child, I am so sorry for her; but we must be very careful."
"Why, Belle," said Mamie Sue, in a voice that is always so comfortable because she is nice and fat, "Roxy said she was going to like her a lot, and she's got Roxy's lovely house while Roxy has to live in the cottage, which is just as bad as moving into a chicken coop after the Byrd Mansion. ”

“ And Astrid and Ingeborg from the old Ames place on the hill. Hello, girls! And that last one is Mr. Ricketts and his family.”
“Goodness, Kit,” Jean cried. “You’re getting to be just like Cousin Roxy on family history. I could never remember them all if I lived out here a thousand years.”
“ ‘An I should live a thousand years, I ne’er should forget it,’ ” chanted Kit, gaily. “Oh, I do hope there’ll be music tonight. Cousin Roxy says she’s tried to hire some splendid old fellow, Cady Graves. Isn’t that a queer name for a fiddler? He’s very peculiar, she says, but he calls out wonderfully. ”

“ Helen, go bring the family treasures from under that pine tree, and put them in the back of our car."
"You know, Cousin Roxy," Kit exclaimed, "I thought the minute you showed up down here to-night you'd be the chief of the fire department."
Cousin Roxy laughed heartily.
"Did you, child? Well, I've always held that there are times and seasons when you ought to let the men-folks alone. After you've lived a lifetime in these parts, you'll know that every boy born and bred around here is taught how to fight fire from the time he can tote a water bucket. Did you save all the chickens, Shad?" ”

“ Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. She had stepped off with the Judge just as lightly as the girls. “Well, he has got a way with him, hasn’t he? Cady’s more than a person up here. He’s an institution. I like to think when he passes over the Lord will find a pleasant place for him, he has given so much real happiness to everyone.”
Last of all came the chicken supper, served at long tables around the sides of the hall. All of the girls were pressed into service as waitresses, with Cousin Roxy presiding over the feast like a beaming spirit of plenty. ”

“ In extreme cases, the baby could be called “Victoria Adelaide.”
In this instance baby’s mother was a plain, quiet 049woman; and she thought baby’s grandmother’s name was quite fine enough for baby; and so baby was called “Roxy,” and, when she was ten years old, you would have thought little Roxy fully as old-fashioned as her name.
I think it is her clothes that makes her image look so funny as she rises up before me. She herself had brown hair and eyes, and a good country complexion of milk and roses—such a nice complexion, girls! You see she had plenty of bread and milk to eat ”

“ This time it was Cousin Roxy at the other end. After her marriage to the Judge, they had taken the long deferred wedding trip up to Boston, visiting relatives there, and returning in time for a splendid old-fashioned Thanksgiving celebration at the Ellis homestead. Maple Lawn was closed for the winter but Hiram, the hired man, “elected” as he said, to stay on there indefinitely and work the farm on shares for Miss Roxy as he still called her.
“And like enough,” Cousin Roxy said comfortably, when she heard of his intentions, “he’s going to marry somebody himself. ”

“ Belle said to me the first time I let Roxanne beg me into bringing my lunch instead of going home for it, as I had been doing every day to keep from seeming to be so alone, eating all by myself while they had spread theirs all together out on the side porch or even out on the big flat stone when it was warm enough. "When Roxy wanted to invite you, I felt sure you wouldn't come."
Some people have a way of freezing up all the pleasure that they can get close enough to talk over. Belle is that kind. ”

“ But my master is in debt to Meshach Milburn, an' he's married Miss [Pg 172] Vesty, an' we think we're all gwyn to be sold or made to live with that man that wears the bad man's hat.' Says I: 'Roxy, darling, maybe I kin buy you.' 'Oh, I wish you was my master,' Roxy said. An' jest at that minute, love bein' oncommon strong over me this mornin', I took the first kiss from Roxy's mouth, an' she didn't say nothin' agin it. ”

“ Where do you want it, Miss Roxy?"
"If it doesn't rain, it may as well stay where it is. I can begin on the pillows in the morning. I hope you remembered to get some new ticking."
"Yes, I did; a whole lot. I left it under the seat of the buggy, but I'll get it. How are you going to trim that waist, Miss Roxy?"
"With this lace." The seamstress laid strips of the trimming on the material and noted the effect with appreciative eye.
"Feather beds are very much like some people," said Janet, watching Miss Roxy's deft fingers. ”

“ Adams," said Miss Roxy, "you need n't worry about keepin' that secret, 'cause that ar was all talked over atween meetin's a-Sunday noon; for Mis' Kittridge she used to know his aunt Jerushy, her that married Solomon Peters, and Mis' Captain Badger she says that he has a very good property, and is a professor in the Old South church in Boston."
"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "how things do get about!"
"People will talk, there ain't no use trying to help it," said Miss Roxy; "but it's strongly borne in on my mind that it ain't Adams, nor 't ain't Moses Pennel that's to marry her. ”