Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery. Casper S. Yost
us,” cried Mrs. Hutchings.
“Nay,” said Patience, “boiling the pot.”
“You don’t understand our slang, Patience,” Mrs. Hutchings explained. “Roasting means criticising or rebuking.”
“Yea, basting,” said Patience.
Mrs. Pollard remarked: “I’ve heard my mother say, ‘He got a basting!’ ”
“An up-and-down turn to the hourglass does to a turn,” Patience observed dryly.
“I suppose she means,” said Mrs. Hutchings, “that two hours of basting or roasting would make us understand.”
“Would she be likely to know about hourglasses?” Mrs. Curran asked.
Patience answered the question.
“A dial beam on a sorry day would make a muck o’ basting.” Meaning that a sundial was of no use on a cloudy day.
But Patience is not usually as patient with lack of understanding as this bit of conversation would indicate.
“I dress and baste thy fowl,” she said once, “and thee wouldst have me eat for thee. If thou wouldst build the comb, then search thee for the honey.”
“Oh, we know we are stupid,” said one. “We admit it.”
“Saw drip would build thy head and fill thy crannies,” Patience went on, “yet ye feel smug in wisdom.”
And again: “I card and weave, and ye look a painful lot should I pass ye a bobbin to wind.”
A request to repeat a doubtful line drew forth this exclamation: “Bother! I fain would sew thy seam, not do thy patching.”
At another time she protested against a discussion that interrupted the delivery of a poem: “Who then doth hold the distaff from whence the thread doth wind? Thou art shuttling ’twixt the woof and warp but to mar the weaving.”
And once she exclaimed, “I sneeze on rust o’ wits!”
But it must not be understood that Patience is bad-tempered. These outbreaks are quoted to show one side of her personality, and they usually indicate impatience rather than anger: for, a moment after such caustic exclamations, she is likely to be talking quite genially or dictating the tenderest of poetry. She quite often, too, expresses affection for the family with which she has associated herself. At one time she said to Mrs. Curran, who had expressed impatience at some cryptic utterance of the board:
“Ah, weary, weary me, from trudging and tracking o’er the long road to thy heart! Wilt thou, then, not let me rest awhile therein?”
And again: “Should thee let thy fire to ember I fain would cast fresh faggots.”
And at another time she said of Mrs. Curran: “She doth boil and seethe, and brew and taste, but I have a loving for the wench.”
But she seems to think that those with whom she is associated should take her love for granted, as home folks usually do, and she showers her most beautiful compliments upon the casual visitor who happens to win her favor. To one such she said:
“The heart o’ her hath suffered thorn, but bloomed a garland o’er the wounds.”
To a lady who is somewhat deaf she paid this charming tribute:
“She hath an ear upon her every finger’s tip, and ’pon her eye a thousand flecks o’ color for to spread upon a dreary tale and paint a leaden sky aflash. What need she o’ ears?”
And to another who, after a time at the board, said she did not want to weary Patience:
“Weary then at loving of a friend? Would I then had the garlanded bloom o’ love she hath woven and lighted, I do swear, with smiling washed brighter with her tears.”
And again: “I be weaving of a garland. Do leave me then a bit to tie its ends. I plucked but buds, and woe! they did spell but infant’s love. I cast ye, then, a blown bloom, wide petaled and rich o’ scent. Take thou and press atween thy heart throbs—my gift.”
Of still another she said: “She be a star-bloom blue that nestleth to the soft grasses of the spring, but ah, the brightness cast to him who seeketh field aweary!”
And yet again: “Fields hath she trod arugged, aye, and weed agrown. Aye, and e’en now, where she hath set abloom the blossoms o’ her very soul, weed aspringeth. And lo, she standeth head ahigh and eye to sky and faith astrong. And foot abruised still troddeth rugged field. But I do promise ye ’tis such an faith that layeth low the weed and putteth ’pon the rugged path asmoothe, and yet but bloom shalt show, and ever shalt she stand, head ahigh and eye unto the sky.”
Upon an evening after she had showered such compliments upon the ladies present she exclaimed:
“I be a wag atruth, and lo, my posey-wreath be stripped!”
She seldom favors the men in this way. She has referred to herself several times as a spinster, and this may account for a certain reluctance to saying complimentary things of the other sex. “A prosy spinster may but plash in love’s pool,” she remarked once, and at another time she said: “A wife shall brush her goodman’s blacks and polish o’ his buckles, but a maid may not dare e’en to blow the trifling dust from his knickerbockers.” With a few notable exceptions, her attitude toward men has been expressed in sarcasm, none the less cutting to those for whom she has an affection manifested in other ways. To one such she said:
“Thee’lt peg thy shoes, lad, to best their wearing, and eat too freely of the fowl. Thy belly needeth pegging sore, I wot.”
“Patience doesn’t mean that for me,” he protested.
“Nay,” she said, “the jackass ne’er can know his reflection in the pool. He deemeth the thrush hath stolen of his song. Buy thee a pushcart. ’Twill speak for thee.”
And of this same rotund friend she remarked, when he laughed at something she had said:
“He shaketh like a pot o’ goose jell!”
“I back up, Patience,” he cried.
“And thee’lt find the cart,” she said.
Of a visitor, a physician, she had this to say:
“He bindeth and asmears and looketh at a merry, and his eye doth lie. How doth he smite and stitch like to a wench, and brew o’er steam! Yea, ’tis atwist he be. He runneth whither, and, at a beconing, (beckoning) yon, and ever thus; but ’tis a blunder-mucker he he. His head like to a steel, yea, and heart a summer’s cloud athin (within), enough to show athrough the clear o’ blue.”
But it is upon the infant that Patience bestows her tenderest words. Her love of childhood is shown in many lines of rare and touching beauty.
“Ye seek to level unto her,” she said of a baby girl who was present one evening, “but thou art awry at reasoning. For he who putteth him to babe’s path doth track him high, and lo, the path leadeth unto the Door. Yea, and doth she knock, it doth ope.
“Cast ye wide thy soul’s doors and set within such love. For, brother, I do tell thee that though the soul o’ ye be torn, aye, and scarred, ’tis such an love that doth heal. The love o’ babe be the balm o’ earth.
“See ye! The sun tarrieth ’bout the lips o’ her; aye, and though the hand be but thy finger’s span, ’tis o’ a weight to tear away thy heart.”
And upon another occasion she revealed something of herself in these words:
Know ye; in my heart’s mansion
There be apart a place
Wherein I treasure my God’s gifts.
Think ye to peer therein? Nay.
And should thee by a chance
To catch a stolen glimpse,
Thee’dst