It had come to be a dwelling of comfortable aspect, cared for in the absence of the young couple by a thrifty hired housekeeper, a widowed cousin, and here they spent the off-seasons when the circus company went into winter quarters. Repairs had been instituted, several rooms were added, and a wide veranda replaced the rickety little porch and gave upon a noble prospect of mountain and valley and river. Here on sunshiny noons in the good Saint Martin's summer the old gran'dad loved to sit, blithe and hearty, chirping away the soft unseasonable December days. Sometimes in the plenitude of content he would give Valeria a meaning glance and mutter “Oh, leetle _Owel!_ Oh, leetle _Owel!_” and then break into laughter that must needs pause to let him wipe his eyes. “Yes, Vallie 'pears ter hev right good sense an' makes out toler'ble well, considerin',” her husband would affably remark, “though of course it war _me_ ez interduced her ter the managers, an' she gits her main chance in the show through my bein' a celebrated ventriloquisk.” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Una Of The Hill Country, by Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)