I went on tying it up.
"Be writing a book next, I s'pose," says Ma, and laughed again.
"It ain't that kind of a book," I says. "This is just to keep track."
"Well, you'd best be doing something useful," says Ma. "Go out and pull up some radishes for your Pa's supper."
I went on tying up the sheets, though, with pink string that come around Pa's patent medicine. When it was done I run my hand over the page, and I liked the feeling on my hand. Then I saw Ma coming up the back steps with the radishes. I was going to say something, because I hadn't gone to get them, but she says:
"Nobody ever tries to save me a foot of travelin' around."
And then I didn't care whether I said it or not. So I kept still. She washed off the radishes, bending over the sink that's in too low. She'd wet the front of her skirt with some suds of something she'd washed out, and her cuffs was wet, and her hair was coming down.
"It's rack around from morning till night," she says, "doing for folks that don't care about anything so's they get their stomachs filled."
"You might talk," I says, "if you was Mis' Keddie Bingy."