In the midst I heard a call from the road, and saw at the gate a nag bearing a woman and two small boys. "Here is Keats back again,—he has got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!" declared his Spartan mother; "and I brung Hen this time, to keep him company,—he haint so tender-hearted." She sternly pushed the weeping Keats off the nag, and he flung himself down in the doorway, howling dismally. But little Hen, who cannot be more than nine, walked composedly into the house, looking about him with interest. He stopped before the almost-completed mantelpiece. "Gee, woman," he said, "that 'ere's the dad-burn prettiest fireboard ever I seed!" "If you like it, you shall have the same in your room, and all the rooms," I said. "Suppose you and Keats go down right now and buy me a gallon more of this paint. And I think we need some candy, too,—say a quarter's worth of peppermint sticks."
The tears miraculously left Keats's face, they hurried off, and later we had a feast of candy flavored with paint.
Tuesday.
A terrible night with fleas, and up at five (awful hour!) to teach the boys to make their beds and clean their rooms. Hen's first question was, "Woman, what's your name?" "Loring," I replied. "Haint you got nary nother?" "Yes, Cecilia." "Gee-oh, that's some shakes of a name. How old air you, Cecilia?" "I am old enough to have a Miss before my name always," I said, severely; "you must call me Miss Loring, just as people call your mother Mrs. Salyer."
"They don't," he replied, "they call her Nervesty."
"All these-here fotch-on women gits called Miss, son," admonished Geordie; "you haint used to their quare ways yet."
Later, there was another halloo from the road, and as Joab Atkins slid off the end of a mule, his father remarked to me, with extreme gentleness, that he allowed Joab would be willing to pick a chicken now. Mr. Atkins is a handsome man, with perfect manners. When he said he had a younger son over on Rakeshin he would like to bring us, little Iry, ten years old, a "pure scholar, that knows the speller from kiver to kiver," I told him to bring Iry at once.
Just before supper I was pleased to see another runaway returned,—Nucky Marrs, of Trigger Branch. But before his father was out of sight up the road, he calmly announced to me that he didn't aim to stay, and that neither his paw nor anybody else was able to make him. I believed him,—one glance at his vivid face and combative eyes convinced me.
"Very well," I said, "if you cannot be happy, of course you must go. But it will hurt my feelings a good deal,—however, don't think of them."
"What difference is it to you?" he demanded.