“Folks is fond o’ sayin’ beauty ain’t but skin deep,” he said; “but I wouldn’t hev it no deeper myself—bein’ so that it kivers. An’, talkin’ o’ beauty, she’s one—Lord, yes. She’s one.”
“Look here,” said Tom, “leave her alone.”
“’Tain’t a gwine to harm her, Tom,” replied Mr. Stamps, “’tain’t a gwine to harm her none. What made me think of it was it a bein’ jest five years since she was born—a makin’ it her birthday an’ her jest five years old.”
“What,” cried Tom, “you’ve been counting it up, have you?”
“No,” replied Mr. Stamps, with true modesty of demeanour, “I ain’t ben a countin’ of it up, Tom.” And he drew a dirty memorandum book softly from his pocket. “I set it down at the time es it happened.”
He laid the dirty book on his knee and turned over its pages carefully as if looking for some note.
“I ain’t much on readin’ an’ writin’,” he said, “an’ ’rithmetick it goes kinder hard with me now an’ agin, but a man’s got to know suthin’ on ’em if he ’lows to keep anyways even. I ’low to keep even, sorter, an’ I’ve give a good deal o’ time to steddyin’ of ’em. I never went to no school, but I’ve sot things down es I want to remember, an’ I kin count out money. I never was imposed on none I rekin, an’ I never lost nothin’. Yere’s whar I sot it down about her a-bein’ born an’ the woman a-dyin’ an’ him a-gwine away. Ye cayn’t read it, mebbe.” He bent forward, pointing to the open page and looking up at Tom as if he expected him to be interested. “Thar it is,” he added in his thin, piping, little voice, “even to the time o’ day. Mornin, she told me that. ’Bout three o’clock in the mornin’ in thet thar little front room. Ef anyone shed ever want to know particular, thar it is.”
The look in Tom’s face was far from being a calm one. He fidgetted in his chair and finally rolled his paper into a hard wad and threw it at the counter as if it had been a missile.
“See here,” he exclaimed, “take my advice and let that alone.”