“‘Hello!’ I calls.
“‘Hello!’ sais she. With that she drove five shingle nails one after another, never payin’ no attention.
“‘What are ye doin’?’ I asts ez I fixed meself on a chicken-coop an’ lighted me pipe. It’s pretty hard talkin’ to a girl ’hen she’s mendin’ a barn roof, an’ ez I didn’t git no answer I stood up an’ yelled at the top o’ me woice, ‘What are ye doin’?’
“‘Well,’ sais she, ‘I s’pose it does look ez tho’ I’m playin’ the melodium, don’t it?’
“She wasn’t in a wery sociable turn o’ mind, but I’m one o’ those felly’s that oncet he gits his plow in the furrow don’t pull it out tell he has at least gone oncet ’round the field. So I jest set there smokin’ while she kep’ on workin’. By an’ by the dinner-bells over in the walley begin to ring, an’ she come down. She never sayd a word ’hen she reached the ground, but I wasn’t to be put back that ’ay. I steps up wery polite an’ gits her hammer an’ kerrys it inter the house fer her. Weemen allus likes them leetle attentions. She did any way, fer she smiled, an’ ’hen I ’lowed I must be goin’, she sayd good-by. An’ I went.
“That night ez I set on the pump-trough with Major beside me, watchin’ the moon ez it come climbin’ up over the ridges, I hear plain an’ distinct the rat-tat-tat o’ the hammer an’ the shingle nails. I leaned back agin the pump, closed me eyes an’ drank in the music. Soon I seen it all agin—the barnyard with the razor-back pig an’ the broken-horned cow browsin’ ’round; the barn, so ole an’ tumble-down that the hay was stickin’ out all over it like it growed on the boards; the roof, half a dozen pigeons cooin’ on one end, an’ her on the other tackin’ away. What a pictur it ’ud made fer a reg’lar hand-paintin’!
“After breakfast Pap lighted his pipe, leaned back in his cheer an’ asted me, ‘How’s that ailment o’ yours gittin’ now?’
“‘Ailment?’ sais I, cool ez ye please. ‘Why, I found it didn’t amount to nawthin’. It’s all gone.’
“Pap smoked a bit. He was blinkin’ like somethin’ amused him powerful.
“‘By the way,’ he sais, ‘I was up past Horner’s clearin’ yestidy an’ I seen that humly dotter o’ Andy’s a——’