"You're not forty years old!" exclaimed
Miss Mattie. "You're joking!"
"Nary joke—forty round trips from flying snow to roses since I hit land, Mattie—why, you were only a little girl when I left here—don't you remember? You and your folks came to see us the week before I left. I got a thrashing for taking you and Joe to the millpond, and helping you to get good and wet. The thrashing was one of the things that gave me a hankering for the West. Very liberal man with the hickory, father. Spare the clothes and spoil the skin was his motto. He used to make me strip to the waist—phee-hew! Even a light breeze rested heavy on my back when dad got through with me—say, Mattie, perhaps I oughtn't to say so, now that he's gone, but I don't think that's the proper way to use a boy, do you?"
"No, I don't," said Miss Mattie. "Your father meant well, but his way was useless and cruel."
"I've forgiven him the whole sweep," said Red. "But damn me! If I had a boy I wouldn't club the life out of him—I'd try to reason with him first, anyhow. Makes a boy as ugly as anybody else to get the hide whaled off his back for nothing—once in a while he needs it. Boy that's got any life in him gets to be too much occasionally and then a warming is healthful and nourishing. Lord! You'd think I was the father of my country to hear me talk, wouldn't you? If somebody'd write a book, 'What Red Saunders don't know about raising children' it would be full of valuable information—how's that breakfast coming on?"
"All ready—sit right down, Will."
"Go you!" cried Red, and incautiously flung himself upon one of the kitchen chairs, which collapsed instantly and dropped him to the floor.
"Mercy on us! Are you hurt?" cried Miss
Mattie, rushing forward.
"Hurt?" said Red. "Try it!—Just jump up in the air and sit on the floor where you are now, and see if you get hurt! Oh, no! I'm not hurt, but I'm astonished beyond measure, like the man that tickled the mule. I'll take my breakfast right here—shouldn't wonder a bit if the floor went back on me and landed me in the cellar—no sir! I won't get up! Hand me the supplies, I know when I'm well off. If you want to eat breakfast with me come sit on the floor. I'm not going to have my spine pushed through the top of my head twice in the same day."
"Will! You are the most ridiculous person I ever did see!" said Miss Mattie, and she laughed till she cried in sheer light-heartedness. "But there's a chair you can trust—come on now."
"Well, if you'll take your solemn oath that this one has no moustache to deceive me," said Red doubtfully. "It looks husky—well, I'll try it—Hooray! She didn't give an inch. This kind of reminds me of the time Jimmy Hendricks came back from town and walked off the edge of the bluff in the dark. It just happened that Old Scotty Ferguson's cabin was underneath him. Jim took most of the roof off with him as he went in. He sat awhile to figure out what was trumps, having come a hundred and fifty feet too fast to do much thinking. Then, 'Hello!' he yells. Old Scotty was a sleeper from 'way back, but this woke him up.