“Yessum,” he stammered.
“And you won’t tie any more tin cans to dogs like you did to Charlie Gaston’s little terrier, will you? I like boys full of life and spirit, just so they don’t do mean and cruel things.”
The boy was ready to promise her anything. He was charmed with her beauty and gentle ways. He thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in the world.
As they started toward the door, she gently slipped one arm around him, put her hand under his chin and kissed him.
Then he was ready to die for her. It was the first kiss he had ever received from a woman’s lips. His mother was not a demonstrative woman. He never recalled a kiss she had given him. His blood tingled with the delicious sense of this one’s sweetness. All the afternoon he sat out under a tree and dreamed and watched the house where this wonderful thing had happened to him.
CHAPTER XI—SIMON LEGREE
IN the death of Mr. Lincoln, a group of radical politicians, hitherto suppressed, saw their supreme opportunity to obtain control of the nation in the crisis of an approaching Presidential campaign.
Now they could fasten their schemes of proscription, confiscation, and revenge upon the South.