“Thain’t nothin’ ’tall ter hants if you cyarn’t tell about ’em,” she grumbled.
“Well, just wait a day, Susan, and then you can tell all you’ve a mind to.”
At breakfast that morning Miss Somerville complained that her rest had been very much broken but that she had slept much better than she had ever expected to.
“I am at best a light sleeper,” she remarked. “The smallest thing disturbs me. Now I distinctly heard Mr. Tinsley laugh, although he must have been in his own tent.”
This was too much for poor Bill, who went off into one of his specialties.
“I’d ruther to laugh like that than sing like Robinson Crusoe in the victrola,” said Bobby. “I kin holler real loud but I ain’t nothin’ of a big laugher. Josh, he don’t make no noise ’tall when he laughs. He jist shakes his innards. He was shakin’ em this morning ’cause Susan said she had a bee sting on her toe, the reason she is a-limpin’ so.”
Helen and Douglas exchanged glances with the young men, whom they had informed of their suspicions regarding the humorous Josh.
“Douglas,” said Miss Somerville, “I can’t see why Bobby should use the language of a negro. He is quite old enough to begin to speak properly.”
“Well, you see, Cousin Lizzie, he is really nothing but a baby, and Mother and Father have never corrected him because Father said he would drop it soon enough and he thinks it is so amusing.”