“Ef that thar child don’t quit that fool way o’ stickin’ her head a-twixt the rails ter watch fur her brother, she’ll git cotched thar some day like a peeg in a pen, an’ git her neck bruk.”
Birt overheard her. “Tennessee air too peart ter git herself hurt,” he said, a trifle ashamed of his ready championship of his little sister, as a big rough boy is apt to be of gentler emotions.
If ever infancy can be deemed uncouth, she was an uncouth little atom of humanity. Her blue checked homespun dress, graced with big horn buttons, descended almost to her feet. Her straight, awkwardly cropped hair was of a nondescript shade pleasantly called “tow.” As she came into the light of the fire, she lifted wide black eyes deprecatingly to her mother.
“She ain’t pretty, I know, but she air powerful peart,” Birt used to say so often that the phrase became a formula with him.
If she were “powerful peart,” it was a fact readily apparent only to him, for she was a silent child, with the single marked characteristic of great affection for her eldest brother and a singular pertinacity in following him about.
“I dunno ’bout Tennie’s peartness,” his mother sarcastically rejoined. “‘Pears ter me like the chile hain’t never hed good sense; afore she could walk she’d crawl along the floor arter ye, an’ holler like a squeech-ow
el
ef ye went off an’ lef’ her. An’ ye air plumb teched in the head too, Birt, ter set sech store by Tennie. I look ter see her killed, or stunted, some day, in them travels o’ hern.”
For when Birt Dicey went “yerrands” on the mule through the woods to the Settlement, Tennessee often rode on the pommel of his saddle. She followed in the furrow when he ploughed. She was as familiar an object at the tanyard as the bark-mill itself. When he wielded the axe, she perched on one end of the woodpile. But so far, she had passed safely through her varied adventures, and gratifying evidences of her growth were registered on the door. “Stand back thar, Tennessee!” in a loud, boyish halloo, was a command when danger was ahead, which she obeyed with the readiness of a veteran.
Sometimes, however, this incongruous companionship became irksome to him. Her trusting, insistent affection made her a clog upon him, and he grew impatient of it.