When the man who had been snoring awoke with the first streaks of day, the ringing of an ax sounded on his ear. "If he don't beat anything to bite them trees down and eat them up, I'm a liar. He must have been at it all night."
"He needs breeches—needs them powerful bad," his wife replied.
"Must want to go a courtin'," was his comment.
"Courtin' or no courtin', he'll be ketched by the sheriff if he don't git some new breeches right soon. His is fixin' to leave him. I'm skeered every time he jumps over the fence."
SWAPPING HOSSES
Not more than a fortnight after Windy Batts had been weighed in the balance by the Clary Grove boys, Mrs. Mirandy Benson ran over to Rutledge's to discuss a few news items.
Mrs. Benson was Phoebe Jane Benson's mother. Phoebe Jane Benson had never been kissed by a human man—her mother the authority for the statement. "No start, no finish," was Mrs. Benson's oft-quoted statement as touching the delicate question of the preservation of female virtue. "For this reason, Mis' Rutledge, I'm dead set against huggin'. There's never no tellin' where huggin' will end, and Phoebe Jane shan't get no opportunity."