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Cumberland. She ain't hurt!" He hastened on into the shanty and laid her on the bunk within. Her father hurried about to bathe her face and throat. Buck pushed the other three men out of the room. "She ain't hurt," he said calmly, "she's jest a little fussed up. Remember I said in fifteen minutes I'd have her eatin' out of my hand. I've still got ten minutes of that time.
Debby marching down the hill, continued to sputter about the lost weeklies. "It's an everlastin' shame!" she declared. "I'd just found the one with that advertisement in it and was readin' it. I remember the part I read, plain as could be. While we're eatin' dinner I'll tell you about it." But Miss Dawes did not care for dinner. Like Mr.
"You're that dainty in your ways of eatin' an' drinkin', you make me feel like a brute animal 'stead of a well-brought-up human. Allus uses yer fork, you do; never shovels th' food inter yer mouth with a knife; never touches a bone wi' yer fingers.
"Bless you!" said the farmer, "I kin live without it; but my folks can't live 'thout comin' once a year to Bear Hill. It is a wonder to me why things warn't so ordered as that folks could get along 'thout eatin'. It'd save a sight o' trouble. Why, Mis' Starlin', we're workin' all the time to fill our stomachs; come to think of it, that's pretty much what life is fur.
Well, then, I says, ''tis plain to be seen that all they do in winter is to go off to some foreign part and do the same as here, so I says to them, same's I said to you, Abby, a while back, that they'd better save their breath to cool their porridge. But it's awful solemn eatin' now, without a word spoke." The other woman laughed.
"And not a sign yit of any mule-team comin' up from the rear. They must have religious scruples agin travelin' on the Fourth o' July. Well, I s'pose there's nothin' to do but hunt up some more blackberries. But blackberries is like mush. They don't seem to stay with you much longer'n you're eatin' 'em." But they had to go much farther now to find blackberries.
To see that critter come like a turkey out of a bag at Christmas, to be fired at for ten cents a shot, was as good as a play; but to look round and see the poverty the half-naked children; the old pine stumps for chairs; a small bin of poor, watery, yaller potatoes in the corner; daylight through the sides and roof of the house, lookin' like the tarred seams of a ship, all black where the smoke got out; no utensils for cookin' or eatin'; and starvation wrote as plain as a handbill on their holler cheeks, skinney fingers, and sunk eyes went right straight to the heart.
"And here's summat to set yer teeth in as you go along," said the woman, holding out a long roll of bread. "Growing lads should allus be eatin'." "Thank you, ma'am," said Frank, and he took off his cap politely, as he had been taught at school, and went his way. "As pretty behaved as possible," murmured the woman as she looked after him, "and off with his hat like a prince.
Nigh as I can make out you're figgerin' to open up some kind of a high-toned eatin' house. Is that it?" "Why, no, Uncle Shad, not exactly," explained Mary. "Then what is it a drinkin' house? I presume likely that's it, bein' as you call it a 'tea-room. Kind of a temperance saloon, eh? Can't a feller get coffee in it, if he wants to? I don't wake up nights much hankerin' for tea myself."
And the mulberry groves put Josiah in mind of another innovation that might be made in Jonesville ways. Sez he, "These silk raisers git rich as mud and jest see the number of caterpillars we have to hum; they might jest as well be put to work on sunthin' that will pay as to be eatin' up young squashes and cowcumbers for us to plant over." Sez he, "Their work is worse than wasted on us."
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