The old lady laughed. “I was some scared along at first, though we hadn’t no great call to be afraid o’ them, it was the sheep an’ young cattle they was after. Why, along the first o’ father’s keepin’ sheep he had to shut ’em up every night in a high pen; an’ after neighbors got so thick we had a school a bear caught a pig one day, right in sight o’ the schoolhouse.”
“What did you do?” questioned Ben.
“Oh, some of the boys ran for Mr. James, who lived nearest. He came with his gun, but the bear got away.”
“I wish I could have lived in those days,” and Ben gave a long-drawn sigh over the safe, commonplace period in which his lot had been cast.
“I think myself mebby we took more comfort then,” the old lady agreed with fond retrospection. “We spun an’ wove all the cloth we had; the shoemaker came around from house to house to make the shoes—‘whippin’ the cat,’ they called it; when a deer was killed all the neighbors had a share of the venison, cooked before the big fireplace. To be sure, there were some things that wasn’t so pleasant. I remember once we went without shoes till into December ’cause the shoemaker couldn’t get around before; an’ another time father went to mill—twenty miles through the woods it was—he had to wait three days for his grist to be ground; we hadn’t a mite o’ flour or meal in the house, an’ mother sifted some bran to get the finest an’ made it into bran bread. I tell you, the boys an’ girls o’ to-day hain’t much idee o’ them times.”
She paused and looking at her listeners asked Ben abruptly, “Is this your sister?”
Posey’s heart went pit-a-pat, but Ben answered promptly, “No, ma’am, but she wanted to go my way, so I’m giving her a ride.”
She nodded. “I thought you didn’t favor one another.”
At that moment the slamming of a blind in an adjoining room called the old lady away for a moment, and Posey seized the opportunity to whisper to Ben, “She looks so nice and kind, do you suppose she would let me live with her?”
“Can’t say,” he whispered back, “but it won’t do any harm to ask her.”