"You were," Uncle Ambrose replied, "but then being a young fool ain't so bad; it's bein' an old one that's serious," and his faded blue eyes twinkled self-accusingly, while the boy went on talking into his plate.
"Course I didn't know what I was doin' when I bust into that social. Not that it matters; nobody kires fer me about here, and I'll pretty soon be clearin' out. The widow won't want me back to the farm."
Uncle Ambrose leaned on his table, facing the young man so squarely that the boy was obliged to raise his bloodshot blue eyes to his.
"Nobody don't kire fer you in Pennyroyal? That ain't the important thing; don't you kire fer somebody, Sam? That's what keeps a man straight. If we was stone images now set up in a desert, why, we might hope to have people come a-worshippin' of us, but bein's as we are just ordinary—sometimes very ordinary—human bein's, seems like we might do the lovin' end ourselves." The older man searched the face opposite him keenly. "How old are you?" he inquired suddenly.
"'Bout twenty," was the answer. "I wasn't more'n eight or ten when Farmer Tarwater brought me to his farm and give me my schoolin' till I was a good sized boy. He was more of a friend to me than anybody's ever been."
Uncle Ambrose waved the last statement aside. "Mebbe he was your friend and mebbe he wasn't, but the thing that worries me about you most, Sam, ain't last night's scrape nor the rest of the foolishnesses you been gettin' into in this village. It's you settin' right here at my table and you more'n twenty, been raised in Kentucky and got eyes in your head, and yet tellin' me you don't kire fer nobody! The Widow Tarwater told me I could bring you back to the farm this evenin' ef you was feelin' yourself, but mebbe you'd better stay along with me 'till I kin kind of find something to prop up under you."
But the boy's tanned face grew redder than usual. "I didn't say I didn't kire fer no one; I said there was no one kired fer me. There's a girl——"
Now the tall man's hand struck the breakfast table until the plates on it fairly danced.
"Glory, I knowed you'd more sense 'n you showed!" he announced triumphantly, and coming around to refill his visitor's plate put his arm affectionately around his shoulder. "You got the best thing on earth, boy, to keep you goin'; you got to learn a girl to love you." Uncle Ambrose's emotional old face quivered with the glory of the chase. "Course your girl don't kire fer you now, you ain't worth it, but you up and show her what lovin' her has done fer you. And mebbe I'll keep right 'longside of you, Sam."
This confidence was by no means finished, but at this moment a thin, brown shadow, faithful as the rising and setting of the sun, appearing at the dining-room window, Uncle Ambrose's further remarks were choked off. Returning from the kitchen a moment later he put down more cakes on the table and then shook his guest's hand in farewell. "I got to leave you now fer the day; Miner's come to git me to start fer the store, but there's one thing I want you to recollect while you're waitin' here fer me, sonnie, and that's that the good Lord sends a new day once in every twenty-four hours just to show folks they kin begin agen."