give him great pleasure to meet the boy thet had so many mutual friends in common with him, or some sech remark.  Of co’se, in this he referred to dumb brutes, an’ even trees, so Sonny says.  Oh, cert’n’y; Sonny writ him first.  How would he’ve knew about Sonny?  Miss Phoebe she encouraged him to write the letter, but it was Sonny’s first idee.  An’ the answer, why, he’s got it framed an’ hung up above his bookshelves between our marriage c’tif’cate an’ his diplomy.

He’s done sent Sonny his picture, too.  He’s took a-settin’ up in a’ apple-tree.  You can tell from a little thing like that thet a person ain’t no dude, an’ I like that.  We ’ve put that picture in the front page of the plush album, an’ moved the bishop back one page.

Sonny has sent him a photograph of all our family took together, an’ likely enough he’ll have it framed time Sonny arrives there.

When he goes, little Mary Elizabeth, why, she’s offered to take keer of all his harmless live things till he comes back, an’ I s’pose they’ll be letters a-passin’ back and fo’th.  It does seem so funny, when I think about it.  ‘Pears like thess the other day thet Mis’ Wallace fetched little Mary Elizabeth over to look at Sonny, an’ he on’y three days old.  I ricollec’ when she seen ’im she took her little one-year-old finger an’ teched ‘im on the forehead, an’ she says, says she, “Howdy?”—­thess that-a-way.  I remember we all thought it was so smart.  Seemed like ez ef she reelized thet he had thess arrived—­an’ she had thess learned to say “Howdy,” an’ she up an’ says it.

An’ she’s ap’ at speech yet, so Sonny says.  She don’t say much when wife or I are around, which I think is showin’ only right an’ proper respec’s.

Th’ ain’t nothin’ purtier, to my mind, than for a young girl to set up at table with her elders, an’ to ’tend strictly to business.  Mary Elizabeth’ll set th’oo a whole meal, an’ sca’cely look up from her plate.  I never did see a little girl do it mo’ modest.

Of co’se, Sonny, he bein’ at home, an’ she bein’ his company, why, he talks constant, an’ she’ll glance up at him sort o’ sideways occasional.  Wife an’ me, we find it ez much ez we can do, sometimes, to hold in; we feel so tickled over their cunnin’ little ways together.  To see Sonny politely take her cup o’ tea an’ po’ it out in her saucer to cool for her so nice, why, it takes all the dignity we can put on to cover our amusement over it.  You see, they’ve only lately teethed together, them child’en.

I reckon the thing sort o’ got started last summer.  I know he give her a flyin’ squir’l, an’ she embroidered him a hat-band.  I suspicioned then what was comin’, an’ I advised wife to make up a few white-bosomed shirts for him, an’ she didn’t git ’em done none too soon.  ’Twasn’t no time befo’ he called for ’em.

A while back befo’ that I taken notice thet he ’d put a few idees down on sheets o’ paper for her to write her compositions by.  Of co’se, he wouldn’t write ’em.  He’s too honest.  He’d thess sugges’ idees promiscu’us.