I bade Susan good-night, and before I could turn my back she kicked her number eleven shoes into the air, and with masterly rapidity turned in, as Minerva is said to have done, in full panoply.
I fled precipitately to my camp, and sought my blankets, lying awake in a kind of half-reverie, in which Susan and Arkansas, the old woman and her coons, were the prominent figures. Later I fell asleep, and lay motionless until the distant roar of swine awoke me before sunrise next morning.
Seated upon my blankets, I beheld Susan’s mother drag forth the two children, one after another, by the napes of their necks, and, shaking the sleep out of them, propel them spitefully toward the brook; then taking her pipe from her mouth she bent low over the sleeping form of her huge daughter, and in a high, shrill, nasal key, screeched in her ear, “Yew Suse!”
No sign of life on the part of the daughter.
“Susan, are you a-going to get up?”
Slight muscular contraction of the lower limbs.
“Will you hear me, Susan?”
“Marm,” whispered the girl, in low, sleepy tones.
“Get up and let the hogs out!”
The idea had at length thrilled into Susan’s brain, and with a violent suddenness she sat bolt upright, brushing her green-colored hair out of her eyes, and rubbing those valuable but bleared organs with the ponderous knuckles of her forefingers.