I loved them two children dearly. They wuz both as handsome as picters, Alice fair and slender and sweet as a white day lily, with big, happy blue eyes, and hair of the same gold color that her mother had had.
Adrian had long curls of that same wonderful golden hair, and his eyes wuz big, inspirin’, blue gray, and his lips always seemed to hold a happy secret. He had that look some way.
Though what it could be we couldn’t tell, for he talked pretty much all the time.
And the questions he asked would more’n fill our old family Bible, I’m sure, and I thought some of the time that the overflow would fill Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs.”
Why, one day we got old Uncle Smedley to mow our lawn while Adrian wuz there, and I felt sorry that I didn’t put down the questions that Adrian asked that perfectly deaf man as he trotted along in his little velvet suit by the side of the lawn mower.
But then I d’no as I’m sorry, after all, for paper is sometimes skurce, and I don’t believe in extravagance.
And how he did love poseys, most of all the English violets! We had a big bed of ’em, and he always had a bunch of ’em in his little buttonhole, and be a-pinnin’ ’em to my waist and Alice’s. And he would have a big bunch in his hand, and jest bury his face in ’em, as if he wuz tryin’ to take in their deep, sweet perfume through his pores as it wuz. And always a little, low vase that stood before his plate on the table would be full of ’em.
I wondered at it some, but found out that before he wuz born his sweet Ma had jest sech a passion for ’em, and always had her room full of ’em. And I kinder wondered if, in some occult way, she wuz a-keepin’ up the acquaintance with her boy by means of that sweet and delicate language that we can’t spell yet, let alone talkin’.
I d’no, nor Josiah don’t, but anyway Adrian jest seemed to live on ’em in a certain way, as if they satisfied some deep hunger and need in his inmost nater.
And he would sometimes make the old-fashionedest remarks I ever hearn, and praise himself up jest as though he wuz somebody else. Not conceited at all, but jest sincere and honest.