d the wife of a summer day who--"

"Whew-shk! but my stomick have got a breakfas' notice," interrupted Dr.
Chubb. He and the Byrd had come into the room as hungry as ravening
wolves.

While Mammy stirred and shoveled off ashes I fed all three men to the
point of utter repletion, feeding myself from Sam's plate as I brought
the food back and forth. He didn't want me to wait on them, and I
suppose that is the reason I insisted on it, and partly ate his
breakfast while doing it, just as an act of defiance.

"You taught me to eat out of your hand, even when it was unspeakably
dirty, and you had only saved me about two good bites and the core," I
answered one of his remonstrances.

"But think of the pain it was to save even a third of a tea-cake in
your pocket when your stomach was so near it," he answered as he
finished the bottom half of a pone I had spread thick with the juicy
hash before I had greedily eaten the upper crust.

"I'd rather eat my breakfast out of my own plate and let ladies eat
they's. Sam has to tie up cows that eat out of other's stalls, and the
old white rooster has to be put in a coop 'cause he gobbles the hen
feed; but 'cause you are company he lets you do it," the Byrd remarked,
all in one breath between two pieces of his pone. At which Dr. Chubb
wheezed and chuckled delightedly and Sam roared.

"Women critters ain't ever so free with vittels as men; they have to
kinder toll 'em along to nibble feed, and life, too," remarked the
doctor of distressed animals as we all rose from the table just as the
sun burst in on the situation from over Paradise Ridge.

And while he and the Byrd went to again look at the invalids, and Mammy
Kitty removed the dishes into a little cupboard that served as butler's
pantry and storeroom, Sam showed me the rest of his house--which
consisted of his own room, that "leaned-to" the long living-room
opposite that of Mammy Kitty, and a back porch. That little room made me
feel queer and choky. It was neat and poor; and a narrow, old mahogany
bed, that had always been in the Crittenden nursery, was pushed back
under the low side. It had a shelf or two with a curtain of dark chintz
under which farm clothes hung, a gun in the corner, a jolly little wood
stove, and close beside Sam's bed was the young Byrd's cot with its
little pillow my mother had made for him before he was ushered into the
world on the day his mother left it. I could almost see the big rough
hand go out t