“‘There is somethin’ pretty important,’ I sais to meself.
“An’ with that I walks up to the hedge an’ peeks over.
“Settin’ on the groun’, weedin’ the onion-patch, was the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on. She looked up from een under her sunbonnet outen a pair o’ sparklin’ blue eyes, an’ showed two rosy cheeks with a perk leetle nose atween ’em. Major he hed ducked th’oo a hole in the fence an’ come out on the other side, an’ was standin’ solemn-like, lookin’ at her. All o’ a sudden he begin jumpin’ up an’ down, first on his front legs an’ then on his hint legs, archin’ his neck, waggin’ his tail, an’ showin’ his teeth like he was smilin’ all over.
“‘That’s a nice dog you hev,’ sais the girl, kind o’ musical. She had stopped her weedin’ an’ was settin’ up lookin’ at the houn’.
“‘Yes,’ sais I, ‘he is a tolable nice animal.’
“Then I thinks to meself, ‘Major seems to like her; I wonder how she’d suit Pap.’
“Soon ez that come into me mind I seen it was time I got out. I turned an’ walked down the road harder than I’d ever walked afore.
“That night I couldn’t eat no supper. I’d never felt that same way an’ it worrit me. I knowd no cause fer it, yit I kind o’ thot I didn’t keer whether I lived or died. It worrit Pap too. He ’lowed he’d hev to powwow me.
“‘How are ye goin’ to powwow me,’ sais I, ‘’hen ye don’t know what I’m sufferin’ from? What I’ve got ain’t nawthin’, yit I wish it was somethin’ jest to take me mind offen it.’
“That was ez near ez I could git to the disease. Pap leaned back in his cheer an’ laughed like he’d die. ’Hen he’d finished splittin’ his sides he come over to where I was settin’ be the fire.