Yas; take it all together, I'm glad them two child'en has took the notion. It'll be a good thing for him whilst he's throwed in with all sorts o' travelin' folks goin' an' comin' to reelize thet he's got a little sweetheart at home, an' thet she's bein' loved an' cherished by his father an' mother du'in' his absence.
Even after they've gone their sep'rate ways, ez they most likely will in time, it'll be a pleasure to 'em to look back to the time when they was little sweethearts.
I know I had a number, off an' on, when I was a youngster, an' they're every one hung up—in my mind, of co'se—in little gilt frames, each one to herself. An' sometimes, when I think 'em over, I imagine thet they's sweet, bunches of wild vi'lets a-settin' under every one of 'em—all 'cep'n' one, an' I always seem to see pinks under hers.
An' she's a grandmother now. Funny to think it all over, ain't it? At this present time she's a tall, thin ol' lady thet fans with a turkey-tail, an' sets up with the sick. But the way she hangs in her little frame in my mind, she's a chunky little thing with fat ankles an' wrisses, an' her two cheeks they hang out of her pink caliker sunbonnet thess like a pair o' ripe plumgranates.
She was the pinkest little sweetheart thet a pink-lovin' school-boy ever picked out of a class of thirty-five, I reckon.
Seemed to me everything about her was fat an' chubby, thess like herself. Ricollec', one day, she dropped her satchel, an' out rolled the fattest little dictionary I ever see, an' when I see it, seem like she couldn't nachelly be expected to tote no other kind. I used to take pleasure in getherin' a pink out o' mother's garden in the mornin's when I'd be startin' to school, an' slippin' it on to her desk when she wouldn't be lookin', an' she'd always pin it on her frock when I'd have my head turned the other way. Then when she'd ketch my eye, she'd turn pinker'n the pink. But she never mentioned one o' them pinks to me in her life, nor I to her.
Yas; I always think of her little picture with a bunch o' them old-fashioned garden pinks a settin' under it, an' there they'll stay ez long ez my old mind is a fitten place for sech sweet-scented pictures to hang in.
They've been a pleasure to me all my life, an' I'm glad to see Sonny's a-startin' his little picture-gallery a'ready.