“Betty Hawthorne has got a calf,” one said.
“Is it Betty Hawthorne’s calf, or Caleb Burns’s calf?”
“It’s both of um’s together.”
“Betty Hawthorne has got a silver cup, two cups. I saw Betty Hawthorne’s cups last week.”
“I touched Betty Hawthorne myself.”
“Where’d you touch ’er?”
“I touched her on the tit. Where would I be a-touchen ’er?”
“Did you ever milk Betty Hawthorne?”
“Milk? A girl couldn’t milk Betty Hawthorne, or Mollie either. She gives a whole water-bucket full. Your wrist would in a manner break off in the bones. It takes Shirley Bond to milk.”
Or Tom Yancey gathered up the lambs, his flock, with his cries, cries the sheep knew from long use, and carried them with him down the pasture. A woman once said, “If a young lamb is lost from its mother and is off in some far part of the field, I’ll tell you what he can do. Two hundred lambs he’s got, and over, and you’d think they all look just alike. He can pick up the lamb and carry it across the field amongst a hundred-and-over ewes, and set it down alongside its own mother.” He was seen walking down a field carrying a young lamb in his arms. Or on another day he took all the sheep across two farms, down lanes and turnings, taking them to newer eatage. He would walk at the head of the flock, sometimes calling gently, and all the sheep walked close about him. His form stood high out of the sheep. A woman standing in a doorway, seeing him pass, the tall man that he was with the low sheep following and flowing around his feet, said, “The Good Shepherd. Look! How he’s got them gentled!” and another voice, “They confidence him, the sheep.” And, “See, there goes the Good Shepherd, goen past.”