“That curly?”
“Ye-e-s, that ar one that lays furtherest up the hill.”
The old man loosened his hold of the lad and rose slowly to his feet, a look on his face that Grover Cleveland had never seen there before and that he could only vaguely interpret, but it made him feel sorry for his companion in misery. So he took his grandfather’s hand and as they walked toward the house he discoursed:
“He can’t help doin’ things in his sleep for he was borned that-a-way, and he can’t help bein’ mad all the time for he was borned that-a-way too; and I reckon he feels mighty shamed of hisself now—that’s the way I feel.”
Receiving no response he squeezed the hand he held in both his own demanding recognition of his reiterated sentiment:
“It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”
And gran’daddy replied:
“So it is, Grover Cleveland, so it is.”
For two or three days the lives of our heroes ran along in the usual quiet channels, and then one morning Colonel Ledbetter drove up in front of Captain Sumter’s broken-spirited-looking dwelling-place. On the seat beside him was a “city-dressed fellow” and Grover Cleveland swung his legs over the pendant tail board.