She’s got words, so he says, an’ so she’d write out mighty nice compositions by his hints.  I taken notice thet in this world it’s often that-a-way; one’ll have idees, an’ another’ll have words.  They ain’t always bestowed together.  When they are, why, then, I reckon, them are the book-writers.  Sonny he’s got purty consider’ble o’ both for his age, but, of co’se, he wouldn’t never aspire to put nothin’ he could think up into no printed book, I don’t reckon; though he’s got three blank books filled with the routine of “out-door housekeeping,” ez he calls it, the way it’s kep’ by varmints an’ things out o’ doors under loose tree-barks an’ in all sorts of outlandish places.  I did only last week find a piece o’ paper with a po’try verse on it in his hand-write on his little table.  I suspicioned thet it was his composin’, because the name “Mary Elizabeth” occurred in two places in it, though, of co’se, they’s other Mary Elizabeths.  He’s a goin’ to fetch that housekeepin’ book up north with him, an’ my opinion is thet he’s a-projec’ing to show it to Mr. Burroughs.  But likely he won’t have the courage.

Yas; take it all together, I’m glad them two child’en has took the notion.  It’ll be a good thing for him whilst he’s throwed in with all sorts o’ travelin’ folks goin’ an’ comin’ to reelize thet he’s got a little sweetheart at home, an’ thet she’s bein’ loved an’ cherished by his father an’ mother du’in’ his absence.

Even after they’ve gone their sep’rate ways, ez they most likely will in time, it’ll be a pleasure to ’em to look back to the time when they was little sweethearts.

I know I had a number, off an’ on, when I was a youngster, an’ they’re every one hung up—­in my mind, of co’se—­in little gilt frames, each one to herself.  An’ sometimes, when I think ’em over, I imagine thet they’s sweet, bunches of wild vi’lets a-settin’ under every one of ’em—­all ‘cep’n’ one, an’ I always seem to see pinks under hers.

An’ she’s a grandmother now.  Funny to think it all over, ain’t it?  At this present time she’s a tall, thin ol’ lady thet fans with a turkey-tail, an’ sets up with the sick.  But the way she hangs in her little frame in my mind, she’s a chunky little thing with fat ankles an’ wrisses, an’ her two cheeks they hang out of her pink caliker sunbonnet thess like a pair o’ ripe plumgranates.

She was the pinkest little sweetheart thet a pink-lovin’ school-boy ever picked out of a class of thirty-five, I reckon.

Seemed to me everything about her was fat an’ chubby, thess like herself.  Ricollec’, one day, she dropped her satchel, an’ out rolled the fattest little dictionary I ever see, an’ when I see it, seem like she couldn’t nachelly be expected to tote no other kind.  I used to take pleasure in getherin’ a pink out o’ mother’s garden in the mornin’s when I’d be startin’ to school, an’ slippin’ it on to her desk when she wouldn’t be lookin’, an’ she’d always pin it on her frock when I’d have my head turned the other way.  Then when she’d ketch my eye, she’d turn pinker’n the pink.  But she never mentioned one o’ them pinks to me in her life, nor I to her.