in the state that could hold a candle to her. And Sunday he come
walkin' in church with Annie hangin' on to his arm jest as proud and
happy as if he'd got a new wife.

"Annie had improved wonderful. It wasn't jest her looks, for she
always was as pretty as a picture, but she was as nice-mannered,
well-behaved a gyirl as you'd want to see. There was jest as much
difference betwixt her then and what she used to be as there is
betwixt a tame fox and a wild one. Of course the wildness is all
there, but it's kind o' covered up under a lot o' cute little tricks
and ways; and that's the way it was with Annie. Squire Elrod's pew was
jest across the aisle from Old Man Bob's, and I could see Dick
watchin' her durin' church time. But Annie never looked one way nor
the other. She set there with her hands folded and her eyes straight
before her, and nobody ever would 'a' thought that she'd been ridin'
horses bare-back and climbin' eight-rail fences ever since she could
walk, mighty near.

"When she come back from school in June it was the same thing over
again, Old Man Bob braggin' on her and everybody sayin' how sweet and
pretty she was. Dick began to wait on her right away, and before long
folks was sayin' that they was made for each other, especially as
their farms jined. That's a fool notion, but you can't git it out o'
some people's heads.

"Things went on this way for two or three years, Annie goin' and
comin' and gittin' prettier all the time, and Dick waitin' on her
whenever she was at home and carryin' on between times with every
gyirl in the neighborhood. At last she come home for good, and Dick
dropped all the others in a hurry and set out in earnest to git Annie.
Folks said he was mightily in love, but accordin' to my way o'
thinkin' there wasn't any love about it. The long and the short of it
was that Annie knew how to manage him, and the other gyirls didn't.
They was always right there in the neighborhood, and it don't help a
woman to be always under a man's nose. But Annie was here and there
and everywhere, visitin' in town and in Louisville and bringin' the
town folks and the city folks home with her, and havin' dances and
picnics, and doin' all she could to make Dick jealous. And then I
always believed that Annie was jest as crazy about Dick as the rest o'
the gyirls, but she had sense enough not to let him know it. It's
human nature, you know, to want things that's hard to git. Why, if
fleas and mosquitoes was