Miss Dink started telling about hound dogs stealing goose eggs and about how it's easier to pick a goose than a gander when you're making feather beds. She told all about her drove of geese that nipped off the grass in the cotton fields, and that made her think about the summer the lice crawled off the geese and got all in her hair.
Then Mama remembered that once when she was a little girl, way back in Alabama, she and all the other pupils at Clay Hill School got lice on their heads. The teacher sent word home that every last young'un had to have his head shaved.
Miss Dink laughed. "Makes me recollect the time Ophelia caught the seven-year itch over at Calico Neck School. I never was so put out over nothing in all my born days. And 'course, Ophelia just know'd she was disgraced for life! But, like I told her, getting the itch ain't nothing, but it's sure a disgrace to keep it! Well, sir, Nannie, I didn't have no notion of what to do. And I couldn't let on to a soul that Ophelia had caught it, not even to Doctor Elton. Finally, I smeared hog lard on her, and that cleared it right up."
Mama let me slide out of her lap so she could stand up and take my hand. "I hate to leave, Miss Dink, but I promised Jodie's pa I'd take his new Gazette by the Goode place so's to read a piece to Mister Malcolm—something about Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations ideas. Mr. Thad couldn't go himself, this time. You know he walks over there ever so often to read the war news to Mister Malcolm."
"Mister Malcolm will be proud to hear you read. He's like me: setting there blind as a bat, with no way of knowing what's going on, 'less somebody comes and tells him."
"Mr. Thad says the weekly's got a right sensible column about this new law they're getting up to let women vote. I left the paper out yonder in my buggy, but I'll go get it."
"That rigamarole is all beyond me, Nannie. I'll never live to vote. Anyhow, that ain't women's business! Set back down, Nannie, just for a minute."
Mama let go of my hand and sat down again in the worn-out chair, the only one in Miss Dink's room.
"Nannie," Miss Dink whispered, raising herself up on her elbows, "I oughtn't to breathe this, but I know you ain't gonna talk it. Nannie, that devil Ward is running after the Bailey girl!"
Mama caught her breath! She grabbed my hand.