Well, I never cared so much fur houses after them days. They was bully times, them was. And I was kind of proud of being with a show, too. Many's the time I have went down the street in that there Injun suit, and seen how the young fellers would of give all they owned to be me. And every now and then you would hear one say when you went past:
"Huh, I know him! That's one of them show fellers!"
One afternoon we pitches our tent right on the edge of a little town called Athens. We was nigh the bank of a crick, and they was a grove there. We was camped jest outside of a wood-lot fence, and back in through the trees from us they was a house with a hedge fence all around it. They was apple trees and all kind of flower bushes and things inside of the hedge. The second day we was there I takes a walk back through the wood-lot, and along past the house, and they was one of these here early harvest apple trees spilling apples through a gap in the fence. Them is a mighty sweet and juicy kind of apple, and I picks one up and bites into it.
"I think you might have asked for it," says some one.
CHAPTER VI
I looks up, and that was how I got acquainted with Martha. She was eating one herself, setting up in the tree like a boy. In her lap was a book she had been reading. She was leaning back into the fork two limbs made so as not to tumble.
"Well," I says, "can I have one?"
"You've eaten it already," she says, "so there isn't any use begging for it now."
I seen she was a tease, that girl, and I would of give anything to of been able to tease her right back agin. But I couldn't think of nothing to say, so I jest stands there kind o' dumb like, thinking what a dern purty girl she was, and thinking how dumb I must look, and I felt my face getting red. Doctor Kirby would of thought of something to say right off. And after I got back to camp I would think of something myself. But I couldn't think of nothing bright, so I says: