d, and added
after a moment, in which I knew that his slow wits were working over a
fresh attempt at distraction, "but speaking of dawgs, it wouldn't
surprise me if yo' ma was to let you have a b'iled egg for yo' supper."

Again the storm was averted. He was so handsome, so soft, so eager to
make everybody happy, that although he did not deceive even my infant
mind for a minute, I felt obliged by sheer force of sympathy to step
into the amiable snare he laid.

"Hard or soft?" I demanded.

"Now that's a matter of ch'ice, ain't it?" he rejoined, wrinkling his
forehead as if awed by the gravity of the decision; "but bein' a plain
man with a taste for solids, I'd say 'hard' every time."

"Hard, ma," I repeated gravely through the crack of the door to the
shifting shape on the kitchen wall. Then, while he stooped over in the
firelight to prod fresh tobacco into his pipe, I began again my
insatiable quest for knowledge which had brought me punishment at the
hand of my mother an hour before.

"Pa, who named me?"

"Yo' ma."

"Did ma name you, too?"

He shook his head, doubtfully, not negatively. Above his short growth of
beard his cheeks had warmed to a clear pink, and his foolish blue eyes
were as soft as the eyes of a baby.

"Wall, I can't say she did that--exactly."

"Then who did name you?"

"I don't recollect. My ma, I reckon."

"Did ma name me Ben Starr, or just Ben?"

"Just Ben. You were born Starr."

"Was she born Starr, too?"

"Good Lord, no, she was born Savage."

"Then why warn't I born Savage?"

"Because she married me an' I was born Starr."

I gave it up with a sigh. "Who had the most to do with my comin' here,
God or ma?" I asked after a minute.

My father hesitated as if afraid of committing himself to an heretical
utterance. "I ain't so sure," he replied at last, and added immediately
in a louder tone, "Yo' ma, I s'pose."

"Then why don't I say my prayers to ma instead of to God?"

"I wouldn't begin to worry over that at my age, if I were you," replied
my father, with angelic patience, "seein' as it's near supper time an'
the kettle's a-bilin'."

"But I want to know, pa, why it was that I came to be named just Ben?"

"To be named just Ben?" he repeated slowly, as if the fact had been
brought for the first time to his attention. "Wall, I reckon 'twas
because we'd had considerable trouble over the namin' of the first,
which was yo' brother President. That bein' the turn of the man of