er, or a late rose to lay on her pillow; it
would be better than not being able to do anything at all. After a
while she opened her eyes and looked at me, and I scarcely knew her.
She smiled the bravest she could and said: "Sorry for mother, dear?"

I nodded. I couldn't say much, and she tried harder than ever to be
cheerful and asked: "What are you planning to do to-day?"

"If you can't think of one thing I can do for you, guess I'll go
fishing," I said.

Her eyes grew brighter and she seemed half interested.

"Why, Little Sister," she said, "if you can catch some of those fish
like you do sometimes, I believe I could eat one of them."

I never had such a be-hanged time getting started. I slipped from the
room, and never told a soul even where I was going. I fell over the
shovel and couldn't find anything quick enough but my pocket to put the
worms in, and I forgot my stringer. At last, when I raced down the
hill to the creek and climbed over the water of the deep place, on the
roots of the Pete Billings yowling tree, I had only six worms, my apple
sucker pole, my cotton cord line, and bent pin hook. I put the first
worm on carefully, and if ever I prayed! Sometimes it was hard to
understand about this praying business. My mother was the best and
most beautiful woman who ever lived. She was clean, and good, and
always helped "the poor and needy who cluster round your door," like it
says in the poetry piece, and there never could have been a reason why
God would want a woman to suffer herself, when she went flying on
horseback even dark nights through rain or snow, to doctor other
people's pain, and when she gave away things like she did--why, I've
seen her take a big piece of meat from the barrel, and a sack of meal,
and heaps of apples and potatoes to carry to Mandy Thomas--when she
gave away food by the wagonload at a time, God couldn't have WANTED her
to be hungry, and yet she WAS that very minute almost crying for food;
and I prayed, oh how I did pray! and a sneaking old back-ended crayfish
took my very first worm. I just looked at the sky and said: "Well,
when it's for a sick woman, can't You do any better than that?"

I suppose I shouldn't have said it, but if it had been your mother, how
would you have felt? I pinched the next worm in two, so if a crayfish
took that, it wouldn't get but half. I lay down across the roots and
pulled my bonnet far over my face and tried to see to the bottom. I