Cold Sassy Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

Cold Sassy," she said, smiling extra friendly.
    "Yes'm. I'm Will Tweedy, ma'am. You must be the new milliner."
    "And you must be Mr. Hoyt's boy." She nodded in the direction of Papa, who was over by the cash register.
    "Yes'm."
    "He is a very nice man, and good-looking, too." That pleased me. Papa was stocky, not tall, but he was neat about his clothes,
had a handsome face, and shaved every morning. Most men in Cold Sassy had a beard or just shaved on Saturday night to get ready for Sunday.

    Miss Love held up the dummy head with the pink velour wrapping, turning it this way and that to get the effect. "You like this hat, Will Tweedy?"
    I didn't have much opinion about hats, or much interest either. "Well'm," I mumbled, "I cain't hardly tell what it's go'n look like yet."
    Miss Love laughed. A hearty laugh. Her lips were so red they looked painted almost. "You're a good diplomat, Will Tweedy."
    One thing I noticed that day was how proper Miss Love spoke. Till then, I never met anybody who could talk as proper as Aunt Carrie. Aunt Carrie was taught to speak cultured at a private school in Athens run by a French woman, Madame Joubert.
    I found out later that Miss Love learned to talk right from a rich educated lady in Philadelphia that she used to go stay with every spring and fall, making hats for her and her daughters.
    "Mrs. Hanover was always correcting my grammar and pronunciation," Miss Love told me. "If I mumbled or made the least little mistake, I had to say it over and over till I got it right. I guess Mrs. Hanover liked me. She said that with my flair for fashion, her friends couldn't tell me from one of them till I opened my mouth. 'Cultivate good speech, Miss Simpson,' she'd say, 'and you can marry above yourself.' She gave me her finishing school grammar book. I still have it. I felt certain if I memorized that book I could marry the Prince of Wales—or at least a railroad president."

    Grandpa was real proud of the store having a milliner trained at the Armstrong and Cater Company in Baltimore. In 1901, the company had sent Miss Love and her best friend out to a big store in Texas. When she wanted to leave Texas, Armstrong and Cater sent her, sight unseen, to Grandpa. He had written asking for a milliner and Miss Love was available, so that's all there was to it. But for weeks after she came to town, men would poke Grandpa in the ribs, nod toward the milliner's table, and say, "You shore know how to pick'm, Mr. Blakeslee," or, "You got you a real looker, ain't you?" Grandpa would grin and say you dang right.
    At first Miss Love stayed at Granny and Grandpa's house, in their company room. Later she boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Eli P. Crabtree, whose son Arthur was bad to drink and took an overdose of laudanum in the cemetery one cold night. They found him dead the next morning, huddled up against his sweetheart's tombstone, and now Miss Love was renting Arthur's old room. The Crabtrees thought she was real nice, but she didn't tell her business to them or anybody, and didn't have close friends. The only thing Cold Sassy knew about her was what that milliner in Athens told Aunt Loma.

    Besides about her daddy being in the Union Army, the woman told it as gospel that after Miss Love got engaged to a rich Texas rancher and went home to Maryland to make her trousseau clothes, her best friend got you-know-what by her fee-ance, and they eloped. Aunt Loma said if her fee-ance and her best friend were that kind of trash, "it don't speak so well for Love Simpson."
    You have to take into account that Aunt Loma was just eighteen when Miss Love hit town, and the jealous type. Aunt Loma was blue-eyed and had the thickest long curly red hair you ever saw, with little tendrils around her face that made her look sweet and innocent. Till Miss Love came, she was considered just the prettiest thing in Cold Sassy, and also the most fashionable. While visiting one time in Atlanta, Loma went to M. Rich & Bros, and bought herself some