I should be quite weighed down by the Marrs troubles if it were not for the cheerful society of the boys, whose lively and funny doings afford some escape from tragic and depressing thoughts. This morning before church, when I was making the usual round of the ears with soap and wash-rag, to my utter amazement I found Philip's clean, inside and out, behind and before. At first stricken dumb by the discovery—for I long since abandoned the hope of reforming him in the matters of chivalry and cleanliness—I finally inquired what was the matter.
"Nothing, I just kep' a-digging," was his careless reply.
To-night, however, when everybody was undressing, Hen slid noiselessly into my room, mysteriously shutting the door behind him. Half clothed, I dived into my closet, soon emerging in my wrapper. Hen himself was in trousers and undershirt, with dangling gallusses. Planting himself on the hearth, back to the fire, he held up first one bare foot, then the other, to the blaze, and at last spoke in a confidential tone:
"Philip lied to you this morning when he said there wa'n't nothing the matter with him. He knows what made him wash his years, and I know."
"What was it?" I inquired, drawing up the rocker.
"He's a-courting, that's what's the matter."
"Courting!" I exclaimed, incredulously.
"Yes, courting, by grab! You mind Dilsey Warrick, that 'ere little tow-head come in atter Christmas, from over on Wace?"
Yes, I remembered Dilsey,—a demure dove of a child, in blue home-spun dress and red yarn stockings, with long, fair hair hanging in two plaits, and the face of an austere little saint. She is at least three years older and a head taller than Hen, but it pleases him to speak of the sex in diminutives.
"You know I pack water to the big house of a morning before breakfast," he continued; "well, Dilsey she sweeps off the front porch over yander then, and Philip he goes round and mends the fence where the hogs breaks in of a night."