asked Old Man Simms about the fishing in the creek, and whether
there was any duck shooting spring and fall.

"We git right smart of these little panfish," said Mr. Simms, "an' Calista
done shot two butterball ducks about 'tater-plantin' time."

Calista blushed--but this stranger, so much like themselves, could not see
the rosy suffusion. The allusion gave him a chance to look about him at
the family. There was a boy of sixteen, a girl--the duck-shooting
Calista--younger than Raymond--a girl of eleven, named Virginia, but
called Jinnie--and a smaller lad who rejoiced in the name of McGeehee, but
was mercifully called Buddy.

Calista squirmed for something to say. "Raymond runs a line o' traps when
the fur's prime," she volunteered.

Then came a long talk on traps and trapping, shooting, hunting and the
joys of the mountings--during which Jim noted the ignorance and poverty of
the Simmses. The clothing of the girls was not decent according to local
standards; for while Calista wore a skirt hurriedly slipped on, Jim was
quite sure--and not without evidence to support his views--that she had
been wearing when he arrived the same regimentals now displayed by
Jinnie--a pair of ragged blue overalls. Evidently the Simmses were wearing
what they had and not what they desired. The father was faded, patched,
gray and earthy, and the boys looked better than the rest solely because
we expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except as
a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowed
with a regular ebb and flow of embers.

On the next rainy day Jim called again and secured the services of Raymond
to help him select seed corn. He was going to teach the school next
winter, and he wanted to have a seed-corn frolic the first day, instead of
waiting until the last--and you had to get seed corn while it was on the
stalk, if you got the best. No Simms could refuse a favor to the fellow
who was so much like themselves, and who was so greatly interested in
trapping, hunting and the Tennessee mountains--so Raymond went with Jim,
and with Newt Bronson and five more they selected Colonel Woodruff's seed
corn for the next year, under the colonel's personal superintendence.

In the evening they looked the grain over on the Woodruff lawn, and the
colonel talked about corn and corn selection. They had supper at half past
six, and Jennie waited on them--having assisted her mother in the cooking.
It