And I said to Maggie out to one side:
“They couldn’t seem to eat up their provisions fast enough in the daytime, so they had to set up nights to do it.”
And she said, “So it seemed.”
Wall, the man’s sickness wuz mostly in his stomach—pain in his stomach, so his wife told me.
And that wuz the reason she told me that she made warm biscuit so much.
And I told her it wuz the worst thing she could cook for him, for his health and his pocket.
But she said he loved ’em so well, and he wuz so kinder sick, she humored him dretfully; she said if anything should happen she shouldn’t have reflexions.
She said she always made a five-gallon jar of strawberry preserves; she worked out to get the sugar and she picked the strawberries herself, and she said they wuzn’t set on the table hardly any. When he didn’t feel well in the night, he would get up and take a spoon and eat out of that jar. And she ended agin by sayin’:
“I shouldn’t hab no ’flexions to cast onto myself if anyting should happen to my ole man.”
“Wall,” sez I in deep earnest, “if you keep on in this way you’ll find that sunthin’ will happen, for no livin’ stomach can stand such a strain cast onto it, unless it is,” sez I reasonably, “a goat or a mule. I have hearn that they can digest stove-pipe and tin cans. But a human stomach must break down under it. And I’d advise you to feed him on good plain bread and toast till he gets well, and keep your preserves for meal-times and company. And I’d advise you to set them great boys of yourn to work stiddy, and not by fits and starts, and you’ll have as much agin comfort in your house, and health too.”