States
are hardly acquainted with the word _husk_ as applied to the envelope of
the ear. _Husk_, in the Middle States, and in some parts of the South
and West, means the bran of the cornmeal, as notably in Davy Crockett's
verse:

"She sifted the meal, she gimme the hus';
She baked the bread, she gimme the crus';
She b'iled the meat, she gimme the bone;
She gimme a kick and sent me home."

In parts of Virginia, before the war, the word _husk_ or _hus'_ meant
the cob or spike of the corn. "I smack you over wid a cawn-hus'" is a
threat I have often heard one negro boy make to another. _Cob_ is
provincial English for ear, and I have known "a cob of corn" used in
Canada for an ear of Indian corn. While writing this note "a cob of
Indian corn "--meaning an ear--appears in the report of an address by a
distinguished man at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society.
A lady tells me that she met, in the book of an English traveller, the
remarkable statement that "the Americans are very fond of the young
grain called cob." These Indian-corn words have reached an accepted
meaning after a competition. To _shell_ corn, among the earliest
settlers of Virginia, meant to take it out of the envelope, which was
presumably called the shell. The analogy is with the shelling of pulse.]

CHAPTER III.

MIRANDY, HANK, AND SHOCKY.

Mirandy had nothing but contempt for the new master until he developed
the bulldog in his character. Mirandy fell in love with the bulldog.
Like many other girls of her class, she was greatly enamored with the
"subjection of women," and she stood ready to fall in love with any man
strong enough to be her master. Much has been said of the strong-minded
woman. I offer this psychological remark as a contribution to the
natural history of the weak-minded woman.

It was at the close of that very second day on which Ralph had achieved
his first victory over the school, and in which Mirandy had been seized
with her desperate passion for him, that she told him about it. Not in
words. We do not allow _that_ in the most civilized countries, and still
less would it be tolerated in Hoopole County. But Mirandy told the
master the fact that she was in love with him, though no word passed her
lips. She walked by him from school. She cast at him what are commonly
called sheep's-eyes. Ralph thought them more like calf's eyes. She
changed the whole tone of her voice. She whined ordinarily.