Your devoted brother,
David
Mama folded up the letter. She handed it to Aunt Vic. Aunt Vic passed it on to Aunt Lovie. They cried like little girls like me.
Chapter 6
Mama had said I could go home with Aunt Vic—to spend a whole week—because I hadn't been to her house in a long time, and because Aunt Vic wished she had a little daughter with braided hair and blue-green eyes. All she had was her three grown-up sons, Casey, Hi-Pockets, and Jim-Bo, and Ginger, and Speedy, her horse.
Both Aunt Vic and Aunt Lovie told Mama they knew I would be perfectly safe, but neither one said safe from what. Oh, well, it didn't matter. Grownups never get around to telling all they know.
I was glad Aunt Vic liked my long braids. While she was lifting Ginger, and then me, up into the buggy seat, I looked at her hair. It had started turning gray on top, same as Mama's and Aunt Lovie's. But mostly it was still brown, and her eyes were more brown. Aunt Vic was real pretty. She smiled nearly all the time, too.
"Bandershanks, let's fold the buggy robe around you and Ginger," Aunt Vic said as we were leaving the church grounds and waving good-bye to Mama and Aunt Lovie. "In late fall like this the wind comes swooping down out of the north and blows right nippy."
Aunt Vic's lap robe was a lot prettier than ours. Hers had a long purple fringe. But Ginger didn't like the robe or the fringe. He squirmed and twisted and stood up on the seat, turning himself round and round. Aunt Vic had to sweet-talk him and rub his ears and sweet-talk him some more before he would ever curl himself up and put his head in her lap to go to sleep.
We rode past Papa's new store, the cotton gin, Mister Goode's grist mill, and on toward Ash Branch. Speedy trotted along right pertly where the road was level, but at the foot of the first steep hill he slowed down.