en makin' up a box of lunch--fried chicken and brown
bread and preserves and cake, because Uncle Lemuel didn't like the lunch
counters along the way. And finally grandma came with the box, and Uncle
Lemuel and Aunt Melissa was standin' by the door waitin' and ready. So
she handed the box to 'em and kissed 'em, and Aunt Melissa cried some
more and so they went.

I stood at the door with grandma until they drove off, and then grandma
said to me: "Go put on your boots, Skeet, and we'll go over into the
woods and look for flowers. I need a change." So we did, and grandma
acted like a wild young girl, laughin' and tellin' stories and makin' a
lovely bouquet.

CHAPTER XV

The next mornin' when I got down to breakfast, everybody had et and
grandpa had gone down the road where the tenant was buildin' a fence. So
I took my kite and went way into the middle of the pasture and sent her
up. Then I lay on the grass and watched her sail and drift and looked
over at the Mason County Hills, that seemed so mysterious and quiet and
never ending. By and by I thought I heard somebody callin' me--and there
was. It was grandma. So I hollered back and drew in my kite, and went to
the house. And there was my pa. He looked so powerful, and his voice was
so deep, and he was so full of fun. You'd never thought he was the same
man who was beside hisself over Little Billie. And he was awful glad to
see me, and took me on his knee and pulled out a knife he had brought me
for a present. Of course grandpa wouldn't say anything about that sign
in front of my pa--it warn't the place and didn't fit in. But, anyway,
grandpa seemed himself again. So I sat down and listened to 'em talk.

Before they had got very far my grandpa said he'd seen slavery abolished
and the time warn't far off when hard drink would be done away with. I
was eyein' my pa close, for I knew he drank a beer now and then, and I
wanted to see what he'd say. But he didn't say nothin'. He just looked
calm, and as grandpa went right on talkin', it would have been
interruptin' if my pa did say anything. So he got over that place in
the conversation without any trouble. Later, just before dinner, I saw
grandma give pa a drink of blackberry wine and take a little herself.
She came from a different part of Kentucky from what grandpa did. And
yet they lived happy. It was because she was so smart and like a piece
of oiled leather that bends and don't crack.

Well, as I said, I sat li