Love stories; Mate selection -- Fiction; Mills and mill-work -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
The youth’s pallor deepened. “I know in reason hit were some Oliver,”
he insisted stubbornly, more to himself than to his interrogator. “Hit
were purely erbleeged to be! But my gran’mammy were a right quare
woman....” His lean young frame began to shake violently, so that the
old couch vibrated with it.
“All right,” said the doctor briskly. “Lie still, now, and keep covered
up warm! Got your feet on that hot-water bag? Well, your Grandma was a
wise old woman! Maybe you didn’t mind her as well as you might, but I
guess you will now!”
“Reckon so, suh,” he answered unsteadily, with the first note of
respect he had ever shown.
“You get to sleep now. Here--swallow this!” The doctor eased the dark
head back on the pillow and tucked the blankets about him, stirred up
the fire, and opened a window to admit a breath of snarling storm.
“I’ll leave my door open; you just shout if you need anything or if
you get to feeling bad. I’ll be down, two--three times before morning,
anyway.” He snapped off the light and herded Glen out of the kitchen.
“Glen, you get to bed fast as you make it! Nice time of night for
you--” he fumed as he always did, but halfway upstairs he gave her a
commendatory pat. “Good girl. Nerve. Kept your mouth shut and minded
me. ’Night.”
Help was summoned in the morning to move the young mountaineer to an
upper chamber where he spent three days in feverish pain, and when he
was able to sit up in a high-backed rocker he made his position plain.
The old woman had carried her point in death as she had not done in
life. He had come down, and he would stay down, and permit himself to
be “fotched on,” to the fulfilling of the old crone’s dream for him.
“But I am not aiming to be beholden,” he stated with his scant
civility. “If yo’all will get me work in the mill and a place to live,
and tote me, just once, to the night school, I will make out to do fo’
myself.”
“All right, son.” Dr. Darrow was carefully casual about it. “Guess I
can fix you up. Tollivers--know ’em?--come from up your way--they’ll
feed and sleep you for next to nothing, and there’ll be no trouble
about getting into the mill. But about school--I believe the best
thing’d be for Glen, here,” he nodded toward his daughter, waiting
silently for the patient’s tray, “to find out how much you know, and
maybe coach you a little. It’ll save you time.”
Young Manders turned his hawklike gaze upon her. He looked at her
rather often, but always with an impersonal scrutiny.
“Is she fotched on?” Patent disapproval in look and tone. “I was not
aiming to get me wimmin larning.”
His diction was curious, richly colored with accent and interlarded
with crudities, and yet giving an effect of dignity. Glen thought the
fact that he never slighted a final _g_ had something to do with it.
Dr. Darrow grinned. “You’ll find it’s all of a piece, down here,
Luke.” But he ceased to urge his daughter as a tutor and undertook the
examination himself, fitting it in between calls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account