“No, he’s out somewheres.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She’s in the field, up yan, gittin’ roughness.”
I took some pride in not being stumped by this answer. “Roughness,” in mountain lingo, is any kind of rough fodder, specifically corn fodder.
“How far is it to the next house?”
“I don’t know; maw, she knows.”
“All right; I’ll find her.”
I went up to the field. No one was in sight; but a shock of fodder was walking away from me, and I conjectured that “maw’s” feet were under it; so I hailed:
“Hello!”
The shock turned around, then tumbled over, and there stood revealed a bare-headed, bare-footed woman, coarse featured but of superb physique—one of those mountain giantesses who think nothing of shouldering a two-bushel sack of corn and carrying it a mile or two without letting it down.