https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2012/04/13/14/13/tag-32560_1280.png
“Aunt Susanna, don't worry about us/Cousin Robert snatched the bad guys and there will be no more fuss!”
Ten-year-old Glendella was singing in the tune of “Oh, Susanna,” cheering her great aunt Susanna Ludlow up about all that could have been going on around her and her great-uncle Vanderbilt Ludlow, but Captain Robert Edward “Hell to Pay” Ludlow and his cousin, Colonel Henry Fitzhugh “Angel of Death” Lee had quietly cleaned that up in 18 hours.
“I never realized – I mean, we all knew that Robert could be an incredibly dangerous person in early manhood, and that his Lee-of-the-Mountain relatives are at that country-destroying level of potential danger – but sheesh!” Vanderbilt had said to his wife earlier. “Livia Ludlow and her team probably took out a lot of folks, but Col. Lee put on his police hat and packed them up while Robert played Astor like a fiddle – fiddled him like there is no tomorrow!”
Glendella, being trained in the arts of quality eavesdropping by her Ludlow cousins and their trainers, eleven-year-old Velma and eight-year-old Gracie Trent next door, heard all that and understood what she understood of it – and then sang to Aunt Susanna about it.
“I'm so glad you feel like singing, Glendella; you have a lovely voice,” Aunt Susanna said.
“Thank you – we sing here all the time and my new voice teacher, Col. F.V. Wozniak, is another Upgrade Papa type of person – I mean he loves to sing even if it's just warm-ups, so we all love it, and our voices are just growing and growing! Every morning we get up and do our warm-ups and our exercises and our harmony things – Big Cousin Robert puts out the bass and we just rise into harmony over it like the sun, and Lil' Robert just loves to sing the same note in the middle of the chord, so it's like you have a super low C but you also have one right there where you can get it and figure out where you go with it!”
“Every morning here,” Vanderbilt said, “it's just everybody is acting like greet the VIP is just what you do when you meet another family member – Robert is running his household in the old style of nobility but without the enslavement and serfdom – he is raising ladies and gentlemen who serve and love their fellow ladies and gentlemen, and since the Trents are raising their kids the same way, it's just amazing to see.
“Well, I mean, we could move to Tinyville … Smallwood is likely to be too hot for years because there's enough family members flipping their whole entire wig over the winery becoming a division of Robert's soda company … at least in Tinyville I'd have peace when I get home. I'll start looking around.
“Oh, Archibald called. He's willing to come back and help out now with our transition to making high-end grape soda – we are set on that end – and, with the winery workers now joining the buy-in of the Ludlow Bubbly too, everyone is going to get set up to be blessed this month because that way the company will not have so much debt to Thomas Stepforth – yeah, a Black billionaire is facilitating the financing, and who woulda thunk it? But this is no time to start acting like Astor and Midas; it's time to just do the right thing and be blessed.”