“Oh, I know we’ve got more to eat an’ to put on, but I’d ruther wear a feller an’ a wench, an’ set down to corn bread an’ coffee, an’ see some satisfaction. Lonie slips out with her banjo an’ goes to Bob Ellis’s, an’ that boy o’ Bob’s ain’t fit company fer my girl. It’ll come to something bad shore. An’ Ben is cuttin’ up like he’s goin’ to marry that no-’count girl o’ Jem Ray’s. It’ll be a sorry day fer Reenie ef he brings that thing in. Reenie’s worried to the bone, an’ coughs haf the night so she kain’t sleep. I don’t want her to be like Dan Goforth’s wife, a-strainin’ up hill and down, pickin’ strawberries, an’ blackberries, an’ buckberries, an’ dryin’ fruit, an’ cannin’ peaches, an’ runnin’ after chickens, an’ if ever she sets down a minute he says: ‘Nancy, looks like ye’d take better keer o’ that something er other, an’ me workin’ so hard to keep the fam’ly off the county,’ an’ she ups an’ goes at it agin. Her pore little hands, you could see to read through ’em, an’ she’s so scant you could put her in a matchbox mighty nigh, an’ hit full. I don’t want Reenie to git thataway. When I married her I didn’t count on gittin’ much help. I knowed she wuz like her father, Uncle Lish Bates, out in Madison. He wuzn’t a workin’ man by natur. Six hundred acres o’ land wuz what he owned, an’ when one o’ his fields got wore out he would pick out the richest piece on the place, where the big timber growed, an’ cut a dead-ring around the oaks an’ chestnuts an’ poplars, an’ next year when they’s dead he’d chop out a hole in ’em an’ set fire in the hole, an’ it ’ud never go out till the tree wuz burnt up, less’n it rained, so he didn’t have clearin’ to do, only pilin’ brush. In the winter he’d go out an’ git him a big bunch o’ wood an’ bring it in an’ stack it up in the corner, high as he could. Then he’d make a big fire an’ set an’ tell the masterest tales so long as they wuz anybody to drap in an’ listen, an’ when they wuzn’t he’d jest set an’ sing. He couldn’t read a book-word, but he knowed ever’ song from Noher down. Nothin’ ever made him mad, an’ he wuz so clever round his house that folks said ef the devil wuz to come along, Uncle Lish would set him a bite an’ sing him a song, then tell him the way to the next place. I thought I wuz gittin’ something like that when I married Reenie. I knowed I could work hard enough fer both of us, an’ ef I wanted to do it I wuz my own fool an’ nobody else’s. But here’s Reenie goin’ against her own sef, seems like, an’ so different I’m about to fergit where I live. I want you to go an’ talk to her, Mis’ Dolly. That’s what I’ve come fer. She’ll listen to what you say.” “Hadn’t you better talk to her yourself, Len?” I asked, feeling appropriately uncomfortable. “She might snap me up. She’s never done that in her life, an’ ef she did, I’d never fergit it. I ain’t goin’ to resk it. If I kain’t live peaceable with my own wife, we’ll bust the quilt right now an’ quit.”