come on back to the house quick like some kind of hurted animal.
But, dearie me, I never got a single tear shed, for there were Mis'
Peavey with Buck in her arms, shaking him upside down to get out a
brass button he hadn't swallowed. By the time we poured him full of
hot mustard water and the button fell outen his little apron pocket,
I had done got my grip on myself."

"I just can't stand it that you had to let him go," Miss Wingate
both laughed and sobbed.

"Yes, but I ain't told you about the commencement, honey-bird.
There's that tear _I_ didn't get to drop a-splashing outen your eyes
on the doll's hat! That day was the most grandest thing that ever
happened to anybody's mother, anywhere in this world. I didn't think
I could go to see him get the diplomy, for with all his saving ways
and working hard in the summer, it had been a pull to make buckle
and tongue meet and there just wasn't nothing left for me to buy no
stylish clothes to wear. I set here a-worrying over it, not that I
minded, but it was hard on the boy to have to make his step-off in
life and his mother not be there to see. And somehow I felt as if it
would hurt Pa Lovell and Doctor Mayberry for me not to be with him.
Then with thinking of Pa Lovell a sudden idea popped into my head.
There was Seliny Lue Lovell right down to the Bluff, on the road to
town, and with Aunt Lovell's fine black silk dress packed away in
the trunk, as good as new, and me and Seliny Lue of almost the same
figger as her mother. That just settled the question and I got up
and washed out my water-waves in a little bluing water to make 'em
extra white, dabbed buttermilk on my face to get off some of the tan
and called over Mis' Peavey and Mis' Pike to let 'em know. The next
morning I started off gay with everybody there to see and sending