"Yes, she's full grown. She's kin folks o' mine, an' it ain't for me
to say, but I'd be unnatural if I wasn't proud of 'er. She's the head
of that shebang, me included. What she says goes with young or old.
She ain't more'n eighteen, if she's that, an' yet she furnishes brains
for us an' mighty nigh all the neighborhood. You wait till you see 'er
an' hear 'er talk, an' you will know what I mean."





CHAPTER V




The next morning the new boarder waked at sunrise, and stood at a
window of his room on the upper floor of the farmhouse and looked out
across the fields and meadows to the rugged, mist-draped mountain. The
beautiful valley was flooded with the soft golden light. An
indescribable luster seemed to breathe from every dew-laden stalk of
cotton or corn, plant, vine, blade of grass and patch of succulent
clover. Cobwebs, woven in the night and bejeweled with dewdrops,
festooned the boughs of the trees in the orchard and on the lawn. From
the barn-yard back of the farmhouse a chorus of sounds was rising.
Pigs were grunting and squealing, cows were mooing, a donkey was
braying, ducks were quacking, hens were clucking, roosters were
crowing.