"'Who—who's the man?' I says, a-gittin' kindo' out o' patience with the girl.—'W'y, you know who it is, o' course.—It's Morris,' says I. 'Come, jump down! Don't you see I'm waitin' fer ye?'
"'Then take me,' she says; and blame-don! ef the girl didn't keel right over in my arms—as limber as a rag! Clean fainted away! Honest! Jest the excitement, I reckon, o' breakin' it to her so suddent-like—'cause she liked Annie, I've sometimes thought, better'n even she did her own mother. Didn't go half so hard with her when her other sister married. Yes-sir!" said the old man, by way of sweeping conclusion, as he rose to his feet—"Marthy's the on'y one of 'em 'at never married—both the others is gone—Morris went all through the army and got back safe and sound—'s livin' in Idyho, and doin' fust-rate. Sends me a letter ever' now and then. Got three little chunks o' grandchildren out there, and I' never laid eyes on one of 'em. You see, I'm a-gittin' to be quite a middle-aged man—in fact a very middle-aged man, you might say. Sence mother died, which has be'n—lem-me-see—mother's be'n dead somers in the neighborhood o' ten year.—Sence mother died I've be'n a-gittin' more and more o' MARTHY'S notion—that is,—you couldn't ever hire ME to marry nobody! and them has allus be'n and still is the 'Nest-egg's' views! Listen! That's her a-callin' fer us now. You must sorto' overlook the freedom, but I told Marthy you'd promised to take dinner with us to-day, and it 'ud never do to disappint her now. Come on." And, ah! it would have made the soul of you either rapturously glad or madly envious to see how meekly I consented.
I am always thinking that I never tasted coffee till that day; I am always thinking of the crisp and steaming rolls, ored over with the molten gold that hinted of the clover-fields, and the bees that had not yet permitted the honey of the bloom and the white blood of the stalk to be divorced; I am always thinking that the young and tender pullet we happy three discussed was a near and dear relative of the gay patrician rooster that I first caught peering so inquisitively in at the kitchen door; and I am always— always thinking of "The Nest-egg."
WEE WILLIE WINKIE
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
As the sub-title, "An Officer and a Gentleman," indicates, this is a story of character. Mr. Kipling, like Robert Louis Stevenson, James Whitcomb Riley, and Eugene Field, has carried into his maturity an imperishable youth of spirit which makes him an interpreter of children. Here he has shown what our Anglo-Saxon ideals—honor, obedience, and reverence for woman—mean to a little child.
WEE WILLIE WINKIE
"AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN."
[Footnote: From "Under the Deodars," by Rudyard Kipling. Copyright, 1899, by Rudyard Kipling. Reprinted by special permission of Doubleday, Page and Company.]
His full name was Percival William Williams, but he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. His mother's ayah called him Willie-Baba, but as he never paid the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did not help matters.