s
got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!"
declared his Spartan mother; "and I brung Hen this time, to keep him
company,--he haint so tender-hearted." She sternly pushed the weeping
Keats off the nag, and he flung himself down in the doorway, howling
dismally. But little Hen, who cannot be more than nine, walked
composedly into the house, looking about him with interest. He stopped
before the almost-completed mantelpiece. "Gee, woman," he said, "that
'ere's the dad-burn prettiest fireboard ever I seed!" "If you like it,
you shall have the same in your room, and all the rooms," I said.
"Suppose you and Keats go down right now and buy me a gallon more of
this paint. And I think we need some candy, too,--say a quarter's worth
of peppermint sticks."

The tears miraculously left Keats's face, they hurried off, and later we
had a feast of candy flavored with paint.

_Tuesday._

A terrible night with fleas, and up at five (awful hour!) to teach the
boys to make their beds and clean their rooms. Hen's first question was,
"Woman, what's your name?" "Loring," I replied. "Haint you got nary
nother?" "Yes, Cecilia." "Gee-oh, that's some shakes of a name. How old
air you, Cecilia?" "I am old enough to have a Miss before my name
always," I said, severely; "you must call me Miss Loring, just as people
call your mother Mrs. Salyer."

"They don't," he replied, "they call her Nervesty."

"All these-here fotch-on women gits called Miss, son," admonished
Geordie; "you haint used to their quare ways yet."

Later, there was another halloo from the road, and as Joab Atkins slid
off the end of a mule, his father remarked to me, with extreme
gentleness, that he allowed Joab would be willing to pick a chicken
now. Mr. Atkins is a handsome man, with perfect manners. When he said he
had a younger son over on Rakeshin he would like to bring us, little
Iry, ten years old, a "pure scholar, that knows the speller from kiver
to kiver," I told him to bring Iry at once.

Just before supper I was pleased to see another runaway returned,--Nucky
Marrs, of Trigger Branch. But before his father was out of sight up the
road, he calmly announced to me that he didn't aim to stay, and that
neither his paw nor anybody else was able to make him. I believed
him,--one glance at his vivid face and combative eyes convinced me.

"Very well," I said, "if you cannot be happy, of course you must go. But
it will hurt my feelings a