“This is the curly wa’nut all right,” growled Sumter with a malevolent twang unintelligible to the child.
“I certainly am sorry for you. Gran’daddy wrote three letters ’bout this yer tree and he was goin’ to turn the answers over to you so’t you could take up with ary one you’d a mind to—that’s what he said——”
“You say he did? Didn’t he ’low he’d bought the tree fair ’nough?”
“That ain’t the way he thought about it—and me and gran’daddy, you know, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; he said you could sell it for enough money to pay all you owed. He was plumb glad of it and now he’ll be mighty nigh as sorry as you and me is.”
For a moment sad, silent thought held sway.
“There’s one good thing about it though,” the child tucked his garment tightly under his knees, “you don’t get out without dressin’ yourself, the way I do; you ought to be glad about that. Gran’daddy says there’s always some good even in the baddest things if we watch out for it.”
His companion made no response and the boy resumed his role of sympathizer.
“I reckon you was borned that-a-way, jes’ like me, and it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; and you ain’t got any Dixie to watch out for you. And Aunt Carliny, she makes me sleep with her and Jakey, so’s she can catch me at it, but I don’t guess you’ve got any Aunt Carliny either.”
“Naw,” old man Sumter got up and reached for his lantern, “I ain’t got nary somebody that cares what becomes of me.”
The boy got down off the log and pityingly took his hand.