I don’t keer what he settles on when he’s grown; I expect to take pride in the way he’ll do it—­an’ that’s the principal thing, after all.

It’s the “Well done” we’re all a-hopin’ to hear at the last day; an’ the po’ laborer thet digs a good ditch’ll have thess ez good a chance to hear it ez the man that owns the farm.

SONNY “KEEPIN’ COMPANY”

[Illustration:  ‘H’]

Hello, doc’; come in!  Don’t ask me to shake hands, though; ’t least, not tell I can drop this ‘ere piece o’ ribbin.

I never reelized how much shenanigan it took to tie a bow o’ ribbin tell I started experimentin’ with this here buggy-whup o’ Sonny’s.

An’ he wants it tied thess so.  He’s a reg’lar Miss Nancy, come to taste.

All the boys, nowadays, they seem to think thet ez soon ez they commence to keep company, they must have ribbin bows tied on their buggy-whups—­an’ I reckon it’s in accordance, ef anything is.  I thess called you in to look at his new buggy, doctor.  You’ve had your first innin’s, ez the base-ball fellers says, at all o’ his various an’ sundry celebrations, from his first appearance to his gradj’atin’, and I’ll call your attention to a thing I wouldn’t mention to a’ outsider.

Sence he taken a notion to take the girls out a-ridin’, why, I intend for him to do it in proper style; an’ I went an’ selected this buggy myself.

It is sort o’ fancy, maybe, for the country, but I knew he’d like it fancy—­at his age.  I got it good an’ high, so’s it could straddle stumps good.  They’s so many tree-stumps in our woods, an’ I know Sonny ain’t a-goin’ to drive nowhere but in the woods so long ez they’s a livin’ thin’ to scurry away at his approach, or a flower left in bloom, or a last year’s bird’s nest to gether.  An’ the little Sweetheart, why, she’s got so thet she’s ez anxious to fetch home things to study over ez he is.

Yas; I think it is, ez you say, a fus’-class little buggy.

Sonny ain’t never did nothin’ half-ways,—­not even mischief,—­an’ I ain’t a-goin’ in, at this stage o’ his raisin’, to stint him.

List’n at me sayin’ “raisin’” ag’in, after all Miss Phoebe has preached to me about it!  She claims thet folks has to be fetched up,—­or “brung up” I believe she calls it,—­an’ I don’t doubt she knows.

She allows thet pigs is raised, an’ potaters, an’ even chickens; an’ she said, one day, thet ef I insisted on “raisin’” child’en, she’d raise a row.  She’s a quick hand to turn a joke, Miss Phoebe is.

Nobody thet ever lived in Simpkinsville would claim thet rows couldn’t be raised, I’m shore, after all the fuss thet’s been made over puttin’ daytime candles in our ’piscopal church.  Funny how folks’ll fuss about sech a little thing when, ef they’d stop to think, they’s so many mo’ important subjec’s thet they could git up diffe’nces of opinion on.