“Fixed hissef up!” Uncle Ranz bore in, returning with vigor to his own. “I reckon! I wuz right there, an’ the way he shaved an’ slicked an’ combed an’ dressed would take me all day to tell ye. We wuz exactly the same size, me an’ Nathe, an’ he walked in on me an’ says: ‘Ranz, you let me have that new suit o’ yorn, an’ I’ll give you that white sow an’ them three shotes you been a-wantin’. I’ve got to have it right now,’ he says. He’d let his clo’s run down till a skeercrow wouldn’t ’a’ swopped with him ’thout a smart chance o’ boot. But when he wuz all growed inter my suit, an’ rid off on a big bay mare he had, thinks I yer my own half-brother, but it ’ud take some travellin’ to find yer mate fer looks. He went over to Joe Withers’, where Callie wuz stayin’, an’ in two weeks they’s married. When he wanted to, Nathe had a way o’ talkin’ that folks said would put heart in a holler log, an’ I reckon Callie wuz all heart, the way it turned out. As fer holdin’ hersef high, I never seen none o’ that after she come to live with Nathe. She made him a good wife, an’ got to likin’ him powerful, but he never seemed to take to Callie. ’Twuzn’t thinkin’ about Ponnie, though, that kept him from likin’ her, fer when he did drap his troubles he drapped ’em hard. It pestered me awful the way he went on fer a while, huntin’ up ever’ woman he could hear of that wuzn’t much good. I said to him onct that Callie seemed to be doin’ _her_ part, an’ he said: ‘Ef you don’t think I’m adoin’ mine, Ranz, jest keep a-thinkin’ it.’ An’ I dassent say any more, fer Nathe in them days wuz wearin’ his temper outside his shirt, an’ you had to tech him keerful er go round. When Callie wuz fust married she didn’t know much about housework an’ takin’ keer o’ farm stuff, but she went at it steady, an’ in less’n a year she wuz runnin’ ever’thing like it ort to be, an’ nobody would ’a’ knowed the childern wuzn’t hern ef she hadn’t been too young to be their mommie.” “Ay,” said Aunt Lizy, “they went under her skirts like they belonged. Nathe lost a lot of his luck when he buried Callie Brown.” “How long did she live?” I asked, and Uncle Ranz seemed to approve of the sympathetic query, which perhaps reminded him that he had a new and perfectly safe pair of ears for an old tale.