Rice-fields from the high lands.
Gibbie came to-day and among other things said he never could paddle. "Yu knows yuself, Miss Pashuns, I neber could paddle."
"On the contrary, Gibbie, I know you to be an expert paddler," I replied. "So much for that excuse.
"Three of your children were born in the house I had repaired for you. Then the best house on the place became vacant and you asked me to let you move into that because it was nearer your brother's. I let you do it and charged no more rent. You were ill. I paid your doctor's bill, which money you have never returned to me. I sent you milk daily until you were quite well, and during your mother's illness of three months I sent her a pint of fresh milk night and morning until she died.
"Your wife this winter burned down the house you occupied. There is no use for you to shake your head and say no. What else was it when she sent your eldest boy, 5 years old, into the loft, which was packed with fodder and corn and hay, to get peas, with a burning lightwood torch in his hand? Instead of telling you that you must leave the place, as I could not furnish another house to one so criminally careless, when you begged me to have another house repaired for you to move into, I did so. The burning of the house was a complete loss of $300 to me.
"I let you off the rent of the house for the last month and waited on you for the payment on the other house long after it was due. All this time you told me you had no money and I waited, but you told other people on the place that you had $30 put away from your last three months' work.
"It would take a whole day to remind you of all the kindnesses I have done to you and all the meannesses you have been guilty of to me. And now my father's two oldest grandsons come to spend a few days at the old home shooting ducks, and I send for you to paddle one of them in a boat, not as a favor, mind you, but to be well paid for it, and you ride up on your bicycle to say you cannot do it.
"There is no use to say a word, Gibbie, I will not hear it. The time has come for us to part company. You must go."
He turned and walked down the step with a sullen look. I will miss the $2 a month which the two houses brought in, but it is necessary to do a thing like this once in a while.
Cherokee, December 30.