Granpap’s toleration of me passed into liking very slowly. His stolidity often brought my imagination down as if it had struck a wall; and while I gathered up the pieces, the wall would become human and wonder why I had given such an invidious thrust. Naturally the essence of comradeship eluded us for some time. But finally he understood that my assaults were harmless; that he merely happened to be on the horizon when my enthusiasm was spraying the skies; and I began to see that he was too much a part of Nature to become consciously her note-book. He wore externality as a tree wears its bark, receiving all winds with passionless impartiality; but those winds of change were his breath of life. One day I asked him if he did not sometimes feel that he would like to live in a city. “No,” he said, “I have to stay whar thar’s somethin’ happenin’.” Not an eyelash of me betrayed my glee. The least sign of emotion, and the gates of confidence would be snapped and sealed. “In a city,” he said, “you don’t have seasons--jest weather.” In the cabin with him lived his son Sam, Sam’s wife, Coretta, and their children. Once he returned home after a night away, and was much puzzled on learning of their “goin’s-on” in his absence. Cecil having the earache, the father and mother had risen in the dead of night, built a fire, and administered the usual remedy--warm rabbit’s oil poured into the ear. So far granpap understood. “But how,” said he, “could they think the roosters were crowin’ for daylight when it was only midnight--an’ git breakfast too?” “But, granpap,” explained Coretta, “we had been asleep for hours, and how could you ’a’ knowed the time, with the night cloudy-gray, an’ no stars, an’ the clock stopped?” “Kain’t you _feel_ the time?” he asked, in concerned surprise, as if she were pathetically deformed. And later he said to me: “K’rettie kain’t feel the time at all. I hope the little feller ain’t goin’ to take arter her.” “Cecil? Oh, no! He’s a Merlin. You can count on that. Don’t you like the boy’s name, granpap?” He slowly cut a twig from the nearest dogwood and peeled it carefully. “You noticed I never handle his name?” “I’ve noticed.” “K’rettie ain’t high-stocked with brains, but she’s got enough fer a woman; an’ she’s not great on housekeepin’, but ’tain’t every man can git hold of a woman like Cyn was. I ain’t got nothin’ agin K’rettie but her namin’ the boy like that. He might as well be a furriner. I counted on his bein’ named Dick,--Richard Merlin,--like my father an’ grandfather, an’ my oldest brother who was killed in the war. But this sissy name, it’s bitterer’n this dogwood. I jest ain’t a-goin’ to say it.” He cut the twig into inch-long pieces and dropped them into his pocket to be used as a substitute for tobacco.