“My name’s Henry Tolson—glad to see you,” was all that he said in reply as he entered the cabin.
Paul Waffington was hungry tonight. As he sat by the side of the open door, the smell of the frying ham and the perfume of the baking corn-pone came to his nostrils, and his hunger became painful.
“Here, Cicero, Cæsar—come ’ere,” called the mother, as she went through the door and round to the rear of the little cabin. “Now, I want you two boys to listen to what I’m goin’ to say: We’ve got big company here tonight. An’ I want to teach you boys a little more about your table manners. Now, whin you go to the table to eat your supper, you say ‘yes, sir,’ and ‘no, sir,’ when the gentleman speaks to you. An’ whin you want anything that is on my side of the table, you say, ‘please, ma’am,’ an’ ‘thank you.’ An’, listen, Cæsar, none of your foolin’ and knockin’. Now don’t fergit! Cæsar, Cicero! Ef you do fergit it, I’ll warm you both up with a birch sprout whin this gentleman’s gone. Your ma was brot up right an’ had a good rais’en before we come into this here country, an’ I’m plum ashamed of you two boys sometimes. Now its big company thet we’ve got tonight an’ I want you boys to act nice.”
“Is this man bigger company than the sheriff, ma? You know we had ’im once to stay all night,” ventured Cicero.
“Well, I don’t know. But I ’low he is. He may be the Governor fur all I know. An’ if he is the Governor, now you two look sharp—he might take you off to the penitentiary where June Hanley and Jim Fields wint last spring. An’, oh, you have to live on bread an’ water and be put in a great, big iron coffin of a thing—where you can’t git out and jist have to bail water out of the thing all the time, day an’ night, to keep from drownin’. Now you look sharp!” She finished as she shook her huge fist at the head of each of the mischievous boys, and went into the house, calling over her shoulder, “Bring the stranger and come to supper, Henry.”
Paul Waffington went to his supper in the cabin with a grateful heart and a gnawing appetite. Corn-bread, sweet milk and ham was about the extent of the simple repast. But by no means was the supper crudely prepared. The flavor of the sweet corn-pone indicated that a master hand had been at work in the preparation of the evening meal. It was indeed a master hand. One that had learned the trick from a past-master, away back on the coast of the old North State in the long ago, when the art of cooking was taken up with a will in the kitchen of every home.
Henry Tolson had just finished relating the story of how it had happened that they were in their present surroundings, as the supper progressed. “Yes, stranger,” began Mrs. Tolson, taking up the story where her husband had left off, “we’ve bin in these hills nigh on to twenty year.”
“Its not ‘stranger,’ mother, it’s Mr. Waffington from Knoxville,” corrected Henry.
“Well, I declare, Henry, I didn’t know it. But he might a told me out there in the yard whin the cow kicked me, fur all I know. But I was too scared to know whether he told me his name or not or hardly anything else. But as I was asayin’, Mr. Waffington, its bin twenty year aliken’ two months since Henry an’ me come over the Boone Trail an’ stopped here in this wild gorge to rest. We had started to them goldfields away out yander sum’ers in the west. But whin we stopped here that night to rest—lawsa’me-alive, I can remember it jist the same as if it was yesterday—when we stopped that night an’ got a campfire built we got so busy a huntin’ fur bread that we ain’t never had no time to go on an’ hunt fur gold! Have more milk. Pass the bread to the str—to Mr. Waffington, Henry. Take some more ham. You Cicero—tut, tut! Sh!!——” and she put her hand down under the side of the table and shook it at the mischievous boys.
“Oh!” exclaimed Cicero.