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One of the boys will go up the tree and shake the branch till the 'possum falls off, and when it falls the dogs will kill it." "No, I don't think I would like to see it. I have seen so many things killed since I came here. Let us walk back towards the house." "I'll tell Gordon. Gordon," he said, "Miss Grant doesn't care to see the massacre. We will walk back towards the house."
Unc' Billy Possum had a very good reason for not going home, a very good reason, indeed. Even old Mrs. Possum would have thought it was a good reason, could she have known it. But she didn't know it, and so she sat in the home in the big hollow tree in the Green Forest and worried herself almost sick, because Unc' Billy didn't come home, and she didn't know what might have happened to him.
She used to pick big Catawba leaves an' roll her dough in 'em an' bake hit in a log heap, pilin' ashes over hit. Some called hit ash cakes an' hit sho' was good. Nothin' lak hit dese days no sir. "We had plen'y to eat smoke sausage, beef, home made lard, an' yes sir, possum when we wanted hit.
This change the assistant physician was not slow to note, though he was rather slow in placing in me the degree of confidence which I felt I deserved. So justifiable, however, was his suspicion that even at the time I forgave him for it. I had on so many prior occasions "played possum" that the doctor naturally attributed complex and unfathomable motives to my most innocent acts.
He was growing at a tremendous rate, and two years later attained his full height of six feet and four inches. He wore low shoes, buckskin breeches, linsey-woolsey shirt, and a cap made of the skin of a 'possum or a coon. The breeches clung close to his thighs and legs, and failed by a large space to meet the tops of his shoes. He would always come to school thus, good-humoredly and laughing.
As soon as the snow stopped falling, Unc' Billy began to dig his way up to the top from the very hole by which he had entered the hen-house. He didn't like it, for he doesn't like snow, but now was his chance to get away, and he meant to make the most of it. Unc' Billy Possum didn't know whether he liked the snow more than he hated it or hated it more than he liked it, just now.
My first impression of Possum Gully was bitter disappointment an impression which time has failed to soften or wipe away. How flat, common, and monotonous the scenery appeared after the rugged peaks of the Timlinbilly Range! Our new house was a ten-roomed wooden structure, built on a barren hillside.
"Good evening, mah dear," said Unc' Billy, in the mildest kind of a voice. Old Mrs. Possum said nothing, but Unc' Billy felt as if her sharp black eyes were looking right through him. Unc' Billy grinned a sickly kind of grin as he said: "Ah hopes yo'alls are feeling good tonight." "Where's that dinner Ah sent yo' fo'?" demanded old Mrs. Possum sharply. Unc' Billy fidgeted uneasily.
After supper, we adjourned to the open plain. The night was delicious; and for half-an-hour the congress was governed by that dignified silence which backcountry men appreciate so highly, yet so unconsciously. Then the contemplative quiet of our synod was broken by the vigorous barking of Saunders' dog, at a solitary box tree, indicating a possum tree'd in full sight.
"Ah 'specks Ah'm in fo' it this time, sho' enough!" he said. Unc' Billy Possum crept along in the darkest shadows he could find as he drew near to the great hollow tree which is his home. "Ah 'specks Ah'm in fo' it. Ah 'specks Ah sho'ly am in fo' it this time," he kept muttering. So Unc' Billy crept along in the black shadows until he got where he could look up and see his own doorway.
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