y, she was one of the kind there's no use trying to describe.
The feller that could see her that-a-way and not feel made good by it
orter have a whaling. Not the kind of sticky, good feeling that makes
you uncomfortable, like being pestered by your conscience to jine a
church or quit cussing. But the kind of good that makes you forget they
is anything on earth but jest braveness of heart and being willing to
bear things you can't help. You knowed the world had hurt her a lot when
you seen her standing there; but you didn't have the nerve to pity her
none, either. Fur you could see she had got over pitying herself. Even
when she was in that muse, longing with all her soul fur that child she
had never knowed, you didn't have the nerve to pity her none.

"He died," she says agin, purty soon, with that gentle kind of smile.

Colonel Tom, he clears his throat agin. Like when you are awful dry.

"The truth is--" he begins.

And then he breaks off agin. Miss Lucy turns toward him when he speaks.
By the strange look that come onto her face there must of been something
right curious in HIS manner too. I was jest simply laying onto my
forehead mashing one of my dern eyeballs through a little hole in the
grating. But I couldn't, even that way, see fur enough to one side to
see how HE looked.

"The truth is," says Colonel Tom, trying it agin, "that I--well, Lucy,
the child may be dead, but he didn't die when you thought he did."

There was a flash of hope flared into her face that I hated to see come
there. Because when it died out in a minute, as I expected it would have
to, it looked to me like it might take all her life out with it. Her
lips parted like she was going to say something with them. But she
didn't. She jest looked it.

"Why did you never tell me this--that there was a child?" says the
doctor, very eager.

"Wait," says Colonel Tom, "let me tell the story in my own way."

Which he done it. It seems when he had went to Galesburg this here child
had only been born a few days. And Miss Lucy was still sick. And the kid
itself was sick, and liable to die any minute, by the looks of things.

Which Colonel Tom wishes that it would die, in his heart. He thinks that
it is an illegitimate child, and he hates the idea of it and he hates
the sight of it. The second night he is there he is setting in his
sister's room, and the woman that has been nursing the kid and Miss Lucy
too is in the next room with the kid.

She c