Plain Mary Smith

scolding, but conversation, just as if I was a human b

woodshed, but father might as well have walloped

, the words soaking in, and the first thing you knew, I ha

er couldn't possibly enter into my feelings. Sixteen I was, staggering with strength, red-headed, and aching to be at somethin

e, every young man for miles around who made pretensions

uched along and cast disparagin' eyes in my direction, it was

e smell of 'em, and fancying I was an Injun or Mr. Ivanhoe, or whatever idee was uppermost at the time, than out in the dusty road, smiting my fell

! I reckon, with the other lad, as with me, it was more a case of doing your litt

nd, of course, mother didn't like it, neither.

ns. They like a fine fi

old man about it afterward he said he acted that way because he was too darned scart to run. Howsomever, he was a fair-to-medium quarrelsome old gentleman when his blood was up. Mother carefully explained to me that was different-he was fightin

t-grandfather De La Tour's offending the king. He took refuge with the old man, while the king sent the sheriff after him. "You must yield him to the king!" says the sheriff. "Not to any king under God!" says Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour. Hence, trouble. My! How mother's eyes shone when she repeated that proud

lot. I left her that day determined to be such a son as anybody would be proud of. Why, in half an hour's time I was wonderi

ttle old church of a warm day, with the bees bumbling outside, and all kinds of smells coaxing, coaxing me to the woods, and a kind of uneasy, dry feeling of the skin, that only the water-hole by the c

knots, and let my fancy roam. Roaming

d, short of waking the baby. I never was done being surprised, after he'd hissed the conclusion through his teeth in a

Then there was the monkey. He skipped gaily from pew to pew, yanking the women's bonnets off, pulling the men's hair, hanging from the roof-beams by his tail, and app

r, I took a long breath and forced him out. I didn't let the monkey much more 'n bob his head over Deacon Anke

a Mrs. Jael. She took in one of the enemy, fed him fine, and while he was asleep, grabbed a hammer and a railroad spike and nailed him to the f

hispers, pull

she; "what

uld have done

pered back, "You're right, Wi

of my discovery, "you'd

l. It took her so by surprise she couldn't get the best of it, so we two had to

u to say such things?" sh

imber sapling, for misbehavior in church. This caus

e woodshed when co

to you a minute,"

me now," he a

Tour in her tones. Father considered for a minute; then laid down the club and went out. First they talked q

as he is," she says; "wh

ther changed her tone instantly. She turned gently to argument. "You are the master," she says; "but would you make your own son a slave? Wh

he asked. I didn't care. She was on my side; I

, "Well, you can go now," I l

Whether it was mother's talk, or that I did really keep out of

't much to look at. Growing her nose had absorbed most of her vitality, and her years was such she could have looked on a good part of mankind right moth

st for poor Miss Hitty. Feathers flyin' and ribbons streaming, she made herself believe she was still in the running; without 'em, she knew only too well what it was to be a lonely, long-nose

r see, held a mortgage on the church. He'd 'a' dumped the outfit into the snows of winter, and never a second thought, if they didn't treat Miss Hitty right. So they overlooked things and gave her the Bible c

through a sound man's head, and spoil him. Miss Hitty might have spiked his coat-tails to the floor, but his head? Never. Joshing aside, she beat the tom-tom over that sermon, giving us boys a medicine talk that sticks still: h

about it. You know I'm medium enthusiastic over what I'm going to do, so I was laying it off to her

you cry," I says, feeling it was my luck

We often used to play parts of those books, so I took it just as she said, thinking it astonishing how well she acted the part; not much realizin

a flower in my coat. "Arise, Sir William

uld come under the head of painful operations to anybody but a mother, an