price tag on you to them and them to you. I'd rather charge my
friends to a Heaven-account and settle the bill with friendly
feelings as we go along. This poor child ain't got no mother or
father, that I know. All her young life when most girls ain't got a
thought above a beau or a bonnet, she have been a-training of her
voice to sing great 'cause it were in her to do it. And she done it,
too. Then all to onct when she had got done singing in a great big
town hall they call Convent Garden or something up in New York, she
made the mistake to drink a glass of ice water and it friz up her
throat chords. She haven't been able to sing one single tune since.
She have been a-roaming over the earth a-hunting for some sort of
help and ain't found none. Now she have lit at my door and I've got
her in trying to warm and comfort her to enough strength for Tom to
put her voice back into her."

"Well, you don't expect no such thing of Tom Mayberry as that, do
you?" asked Mrs. Peavey with uncompromising and combative frankness.

"That I do," answered the Doctor's mother, and this time there was a
note of dignity in her voice, as she looked her friend straight in
the face. "You know, because I told you about it, Hettie Ann, how
Tom Mayberry cured that big preacher of a lost voice who was a
friend to this Doctor Stein, while the boy wasn't nothing but
serving his term in the hospital. He wrote a paper about it that
made all the doctors take notice of him and he have done it twice
since, though throats are just a side issue from skins with him.
Yes, I'm expecting of him to cure this child and give her back
more'n just her voice, her work in life. I'm one that believes that
the Lord borns all folks with a work to do and you've got to march
on to it, whether it's singing in public places, carrying saddle-