The woman came straight to the heads, her eager face beaming under the black sunbonnet, inevitable badge of the married woman.
“Don’t you know me?” she inquired—“little Anne Goodloe that was, from the head of Clinch? Don’t you mind the summer, ten year’ gone, you sot up a tent over there, and I holp you with the singing and gatherings?”
Yes, indeed, the heads remembered, and gave Anne a hearty welcome, asking a volley of questions about her family. But these she cut short.
“Women,” she said, “all that will keep. Let me first get off my mind what I come for. Before I lose another minute I crave to enter these young uns of mine on the highroad to l’arning in this here fine school. I have heared you write ’em down in a book, and take as they come; and many’s the time I have woke with a nightmare, dreaming my offsprings was writ down too late to get a show. I want you to put ’em down immediate’. Phœbe, Ellen, Minervy, Lukeanna, stand forth!”
The four small girls drew up in line before their mother, their blue sunbonnets forming an exact stairway.
“Six, four and a half, three, and going on two is their ages,” continued Anne, “and my man-child here, too—John Jeems, four month’,—don’t pass over him.”
One of the heads wrote down the names and ages; then she inquired:
“And the last name—your married name?”
Anne watched their faces expectantly as she replied:
“Talbert.”