around looking at things and living dully. I
didn't try to study out anything, but I must have watched closer than I
knew, for every single thing I saw then, over that whole farm, I can
shut my eyes and see to-day; everything, from the old hawk tilting his
tail to steer him in soaring, to a snake catching field mice in the
grass, lichens on the fence, flowers, butterflies, every single thing.
Mostly I sat to watch something that promised to become interesting,
and before I knew it, I was back on the shame question. That's the
most dreadful word in the dictionary. There's something about it that
makes your face burn, only to have it in your mind.

Laddie said he never had met any man who knew the origin of more words
than father. He could even tell every clip what nationality a man was
from his name. Hundreds of time I have heard him say to stranger
people, "From your name you'd be of Scotch extraction," or Irish, or
whatever it was, and every time the person he was talking with would
say, "Yes." Some day away out in the field, alone, I thought I would
ask him what people first used the word "shame," and just exactly what
it did mean, and what the things were that you could do that would make
the people who loved you until they would die for you, ashamed of you.

Thinking about that and planning out what it was that I wanted to know,
gave me another idea. Why not ask her? She was the only one who knew
what she had done away there in the city, alone among strangers; I
wasn't sure whether all the music a girl could learn was worth letting
her take the chances she would have to in a big city. From the way
Laddie and father hated them, they were a poor place for men, and they
must have been much worse for girls. Shelley knew, why not ask HER?
Maybe I could coax her to tell me, and it would make my life much
easier to know; and only think what was going on in father's and
mother's heads and hearts, when I felt that way, and didn't even know
what there was to be ashamed about. She wouldn't any more than slap
me; and sick as she was, I made up my mind not to get angry at her, or
ever to tell, if she did. I'd rather have her hit me when she was so
sick than to have Sally beat me until she couldn't strike another lick,
just because she was angry. But I forgave her that, and I was never
going to think of it again--only I did.

Mother kept sending Leon to the post-office, and she met him at the
gate half the time her