home-folks?"

"Lemme see," said Mr. Sanders, pretending to reflect; "he turned over in
his box, an' got his ha'r ketched in a rough plank, an' then he bust out
cryin' jest like you use to do when you got hurt. I kinder muched him
up, an' then he up an' tol' me a whole lot of stuff about a young lady:
how he was gwine to win her ef he had to stop chawin' tobacco, an'
cussin'. I'll name no names, bekaze I promised him I wouldn't."

"I think that is disgusting," Nan declared. "Do you mean to tell me he
never asked about his grandmother?"

"Fiddlesticks, Nan! he looked at me like he was hungry, an' I told him
all about his grandmother, an' he kep' on a-lookin' hungry, an' I told
him all about her neighbours. What he said I couldn't tell you no more
than the man in the moon. He done jest like any other healthy boy would
'a' done, an' that's all I know about it."

"That's what I thought," said Nan wearily; "boys are so tiresome!"

"Well, Gabriel didn't look much like a boy when I seed him last. He
hadn't shaved in a month of Sundays, and his beard was purty nigh as
long as my little finger. He couldn't go to a barber-shop in Malvern
for fear some of the niggers might know him an' report him to the
commander of the post there. I begged him not to shave the beard off. He
looks mighty well wi' it."

"His beard!" cried Nan. "If he comes home with a beard I'll never speak
to him again. Gabriel with a beard! It is too ridiculous!"

"Don't worry," Mr. Sanders remarked soothingly. "Ef I git word of his
comin' I'll git me a pa'r of shears, an' meet him outside the
corporation line, an' lop his whiskers off for him; but I tell you now,
it won't make him look a bit purtier--not a bit."

"You needn't trouble yourself," said Nan, with considerable dignity. "I
have no interest in the matter at all."

"Well, I thought maybe you'd be glad to git Gabriel's beard an' make it
in a sofy pillow."

"Why, whoever heard of such a thing?" cried Nan. In common with many
others, she was not always sure when Mr. Sanders was to be taken
seriously.

"I knowed a man once," replied Mr. Sanders, by way of making a practical
application of his suggestion, "that vowed he'd never shave his beard
off till Henry Clay was elected President. Well, it growed an' growed,
an' bimeby it got so long that he had to wrop it around his body a time
or two for to keep it from draggin' the ground. It went on that away for
a considerbul spell, till one day, whilst