And sez I, “Yes, sick unto death.” She wuz too lazy and shiftless to put on that belt. Sez I pretty severe like in axent, “Dinah, why didn’t you put on that belt?” “Foh Gord, Missy, I cleen don fo’get it.” “Wall, what good duz it do for us to work and make you a dress, if you are too shiftless to put it on?” “Foh Gord, Missy, I dun no; spect nobody duz.” “No,” sez I in a despairin’ axent, “nobody duz.” The father could earn good wages at his trade, which wuz paintin’ and whitewashin’, and the mother wuz a good cook and laundress. And the boys wuz strong and healthy. But they would none of them work only jest enough to get a little something to eat and a few articles of clothin’, and then they would stop all labor, and none of the family work another day’s work till that wuz all used up. Wall, she told me that day that her husband wuz sick agin, and they hadn’t any provisions; so we sent them down a sack of flour and a few pounds of butter. They wuz sent about the middle of the forenoon and St. Luke wuz imegiatly despatched to get buttermilk—he wanted to get a good deal, he said, for they wanted enough to make a good many messes of biscuit. And Barnabas wuz sent out to borry some soda. I sez to St. Luke, “Why don’t your Ma make riz bread? it would make the flour last as long agin, and then it would be fur more wholesome.” And he told me that they didn’t love it so well. Wall, we sent the buttermilk. That night Thomas Jefferson wuz kep’ out late on business, and he passed their cabin at twelve o’clock at night, and he see the family all up, seated round the table eatin’. And I asked Barnaby the next day, when he come on his usual errant for milk, if they wuz sick in the night. And he told me that they wuzn’t sick, but his father got hungry in the night, and his mother got up and made some warm biscuit, and called ’em all up, and they had supper in the night—warm biscuit, and butter and preserves. And I said to Maggie out to one side: “They couldn’t seem to eat up their provisions fast enough in the daytime, so they had to set up nights to do it.” And she said, “So it seemed.” Wall, the man’s sickness wuz mostly in his stomach—pain in his stomach, so his wife told me. And that wuz the reason she told me that she made warm biscuit so much. And I told her it wuz the worst thing she could cook for him, for his health and his pocket. But she said he loved ’em so well, and he wuz so kinder sick, she humored him dretfully; she said if anything should happen she shouldn’t have reflexions. She said she always made a five-gallon jar of strawberry preserves; she worked out to get the sugar and she picked the strawberries herself, and she said they wuzn’t set on the table hardly any. When he didn’t feel well in the night, he would get up and take a spoon and eat out of that jar. And she ended agin by sayin’: “I shouldn’t hab no ’flexions to cast onto myself if anyting should happen to my ole man.”