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 tur