uncle used to say. I in a small bed, and he in the big one which had
been the receiver of so much violence. So I gave her only a qualified
affection until I could see beneath the words and the face and the
correcting hand of my Aunt Deel.

Uncle made up the beds in our room. Often his own bed would go unmade.
My aunt would upbraid him for laziness, whereupon he would say that when
he got up he liked the feel of that bed so much that he wanted to begin
next night right where he had left off.

I was seven years old when Uncle Peabody gave me the watermelon seeds. I
put one of them in my mouth and bit it.

"It appears to me there's an awful draft blowin' down your throat," said
Uncle Peabody. "You ain't no business eatin' a melon seed."

"Why?" was my query.

"'Cause it was made to put in the ground. Didn't you know it was alive?"

"Alive!" I exclaimed.

"Alive," said he, "I'll show ye."

He put a number of the seeds in the ground and covered them, and said
that that part of the garden should be mine. I watched it every day and
by and by two vines came up. One sickened and died in dry weather. Uncle
Peabody said that I must water the other every day. I did it faithfully
and the vine throve.