"Aw—maw—!"
"Ain't we needed a scarecrow down there? With them birds so awful bad? Pecking away at the corn; and pecking."
"'Tain't your fault, maw."
"There warn't nothing else but that there ole uniform. I wouldn't have took it, otherwise. Poor ole Pa so desperate proud of it as he was. Him fighting for his country in it. Always saying that he was. He couldn't be doing enough for his country. And that there ole uniform meaning so much to him. Like a part of him I used to think it,—and—. You wanting to say something, Ben?"
"Naw—naw—!"
"He wouldn't even let us be burying him in it. 'Put my country's flag next my skin'; he told us. 'When I die keep the ole uniform.' Just like a part of him, he thought it. Wouldn't I have kept it, falling to pieces as it is, if there'd have been anything else to put up there in that there corn field?"
She felt the boy stiffen suddenly.
"And with him a soldier—"
He broke off abruptly.
She sensed what he was about to say.