Stitch in Time by John Gould

Author:John Gould
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Granther MacDougal

The immutable Maine rule that the cook is boss of the lumber camp cookshack was something Granther MacDougal hadn’t heard about. That’s because he was a Nova Scotian. He lived near Tatamagouche, on the Toney River, at a place called Up Along, and until now he had never been farther from Up Along than Pictou. Now, he had decided in his old age to visit the Boston States and gaze for the first time on his two grandsons, Colin and Jock, who were already grown men. Neither had married. They lived with their parents, Bessie and Andrew MacDougal, Andrew being son of Granther MacDougal, and father and sons operated a sawmill at Cookson Station, Maine. So all were happy to hear that Granther MacDougal (the MacDougal!) would come to visit. The two grandsons told Gus Minot, their sawyer, not to get into any trouble he couldn’t get out of by himself, and they drove the horse into Bangor to meet their grandfather when he arrived on the Boston-bound Maritime Express.

These two strapping grandsons looked bonny to Granther MacDougal, and they, in turn, were astonished to find the old man in the pink of good health, straight and keen, and his shoulders broad enough to toss a caber at his age. And when Granther MacDougal arrived at Cookson Station, his natural Nova Scotian appreciation of a fine woman caused him to look upon Bessie, his daughter-in-law, with extreme favor. And for good reason. Her father had been a Dillworthy from the English Midlands, by way of York County, Maine. Her mother had been an Aucoin from Berlin, New Hamp-SHEER, and Bessie had just about everything to admire. The Dillorthy influence had not, however, stifled an accent from the Aucoin, and Granther MacDougal recognized it as Acadian. It was, in fact, from Bon-aventure, Baie de Chaleur. True, Bessie had long been a MacDougal, and the jooal was muted, unless she became excited. Her clear black eyes, her straight black hair, and her bouciness of build would still suggest the Aucoin if she held back the h’acc-SENT. Granther saw she was a beautiful and able woman, and as she installed him in the spare chamber she kissed the old duffer and called him beau-pére.

It was the third day of Granther MacDougal’s visit that things began to pall and he fidgeted for lack of familiar scenes. He began to cast about for ways to amuse himself, and now while Bessie was out on the porch hanging up a wet dishcloth he came into her kitchen. She came in to find him leaning over the stove, lifting the cover of a pot so he could look into the steam and see what was cooking. He did not know, being a Nova Scotian and strange to Maine ways, that the most secure potentate that ever sat upon throne had no more power, authority, sway, and absolute jurisdiction than a Maine cook in a Maine kitchen. If that cook also has even a touch of the old Kaybeck, more so.

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