bacco.
I've heard my grandfather tell how he'd heard folks say his father was
always hintin' in his licker that he was a heap better than he seemed,
and if people only knowed the truth about him they'd respect him mo',
and mebby treat him better. Well, sir, he married and riz a family;
there was my grandfather and a passel of girls--and that crop of
children was the only decent crop he ever riz. I've heard my grandfather
tell how, when he got old enough to notice such things, he seen that his
father had the look of a man with something mysterious hangin' over him,
but he couldn't make it out what it was, though he gave it a heap of
study. He seen, too, that let him get a taste of licker and he'd begin
to throw out them hints, how if folks only knowed the truth they'd be
just naturally fallin' over themselves fo' to do him a favor, instead of
pickin' on him and tryin' to down him.

"My grandfather said he never knowed a man, either, with the same
aversion agin labor as his father had. Folks put it down to laziness,
but they misjudged him, as come out later, yet he never let on. He just
went around sorrowful-like, and when there was a piece of work fo' him
to do he'd spend a heap of time studyin' it, or mebby he'd just set
and look at it until he was ready fo' to give it up. Appeared like he
couldn't bring himself down to toil.

"Then one day he got his hands on a paper that had come acrost in a ship
from England. He was readin' it, settin' in the shade; my grandfather
said he always noticed he was partial to the shade, and his wife was
pesterin' of him fo' to go and plow out his truck-patch, when, all at
once, he lit on something in the paper, and he started up and let out
a yell like he'd been shot. 'By gum, I'm the Earl of Lambeth!' he says,
and took out to the nearest tavern and got b'ilin' full. Afterward he
showed 'em the paper and they seen with their own eyes where Richard
Keppel Cavendish, Earl of Lambeth, had died in London. My great
grandfather told 'em that was his uncle; that when he left home there
was several cousins--which was printed in the paper, too--but they'd up
and died, so the title naturally come to him.

"Well, sir, that was the first the family ever knowed of it, and then
they seen what it was he'd meant when he throwed out them hints about
bein' a heap better than he seemed. He said perhaps he wouldn't never
have told, only he couldn't bear to be misjudged like he'd always been.

"He never d