We helped grandma with the dishes. Then she said, "You boys clear out while I take a rest. And after while I'll show you some things." She always took a nap after dinner, lying on a little couch under the two windows in the settin' room, where the fire-place was, and the old clock, and the mahogany chest that had come from North Carolina, given her by her grandmother, and her red-bird in a cage. Grandpa always fell asleep in his chair while reading the Petersburg Observer, which came the day before.
So Mitch and I walked through the orchard, and when we came back, I showed him the carriage with glass windows and the blue silk curtain; and the white horses which grandpa always drove. But we didn't put in the time very well, because we wanted grandma to wake up.
We went in the house at last, and they were talking together. I heard grandpa say something about Doc Lyon. We'd almost forgot that by now. But when we came in the room, grandma said, "Well, here you are," and went over and got out her drawer that had her trinkets in it. She had the greatest lot of pictures in rubber cases you ever saw; soldiers which were dead, and folks who had married and moved away or had died; and a watch which belonged to her son who was drowned before Mitch and I was born; and a ribbon with Linkern's picture on it; and breast pins with hair in 'em; and sticks of cinnamon. And by and by she went to her closet and got some peach leather, which Mitch had never seen before. And he thought it the best stuff he ever et. You make it by rolling peaches into a thin leather and dryin' it, and puttin' sugar and things in it. It's waxy like gum and chews awful well.
Grandma Showing her Treasures
Then she got down her scrap book and read little things that Ben Franklin said, about temperance and work, and study, and savin' money. She asked Mitch if he had read the Bible through, and Mitch said yes, for he had. "You haven't," she said to me—"if you'll read it through, I'll give you five dollars." So I promised. "Now," she said, "you can do it by fall if you're industrious. Work and play—play hard and work hard, for the night cometh when no man can work." I never saw Mitch happier than he was this afternoon. The time slipped by, and finally grandma said to me to bring in the cows, she was goin' to milk. We began to wonder how we'd get back to town. But we went for the cows just the same and watched grandma milk, and helped her with the buckets, and watched her feed her cats. Then we said we must go, at least after supper. "How can you go?" said grandma, "you can't walk to-night. It's too far. Willie Wallace is going in town early with a load of corn, and you can ride." That suited us. So we had supper, fried mush and eggs and milk. Then we had prayers; and grandma put us in the west room up-stairs where there was a picture of Alfaratta, the Indian maid. And I think we would be sleepin' yet if she hadn't come in to wake us.
We rode in with Willie Wallace and got to the school yard before eight o'clock. Mitch and I agreed that this was the longest school day we ever spent.