"Well, good gracious! Don't get so mad. I was just teasing. We're gonna make a nice big quilt pallet down on the floor for you and Farris and little Cleburne." "Where?" "Right in front of the fireplace. You think that'll be all right?" "Yeah, I reckon." Mama told me there would be plenty of beds for everybody, and Gertie didn't say anything else about a sack. She started talking to Grandpa and her husband Henry about how dim the lamplight seemed. "We oughta've had this celebration supper before dark. I can't half see what I'm doing." "Ah, Gertie," Grandpa told her, "your eyes are just spoiled to them electric lights." "I guess so, Grandpa. Electric lights are wonderful." "It's all in what you're used to. Our coal-oil lamps still seem bright to us poor country folks." Mama was crowding more and more food on the supper table. Bess was fixing the tray to send out to Grandma, and Gertie had started dishing up some things in saucers for her young'uns. "Bandershanks, you go with me into the fireplace room and eat with Farris and little Cleburne at Mierd's and Wiley's study table." I couldn't do that! Gertie hadn't noticed that I was too big to eat with little kids! "See, Gertie. I'm big! I don't wanta be with them babies! And I just ain't!" She didn't answer me. "Soon's I eat 'nough 'taters, I'm gonna get real, real big. And my legs will get long and fat! And y'all won't call me Bandershanks no more! And I can go to school!" "Bandershanks, I don't know when Mama and Papa are gonna start you to school, but you're big, all right! You're just about too big for your britches, I think!" I lifted up the bottom of my dress and looked at my bloomers. They weren't too tight! During supper Walker and Clyde asked questions and questions. Clyde said he'd like to know everything that had happened in Drake Eye Springs while he was off in the army. "There's not been much going on," Papa told him, "except my knock-down-drag-out fight with Ward and the store burning. Then the kidnapping! And we've already told you how bad all that was. 'Course the fight and losing the store was nothing compared with that ordeal last week. Me and Nannie aged ten years apiece Saturday night while the baby was gone." "I can imagine." "Yeah, what a time! Every soul in the settlement came, trying to help, all night long. The women, in the house with Nannie, crying and praying! The men, out in the woods with me, searching and cussing! Reckon I ought not say it that way. We was praying, too. But we was all disgusted with ourselves for letting a snake like Ward live among us." "Papa, what was Ward wanting so much money for?"