A-comin' home, the little weenty chap looks up at me suddent an' axes, 'Is
they a mammy to we-all's house whar we goin' now?' Lord! Lord!" Pap shook
his head gently, as signifying the utter inadequacy of mere words.

Little Sammy grew and thrived in the Overholt home. The tiny rootlets of
his avid, unconscious baby life he thrust out in all directions through
that kind soil, sucking, sucking, grasping, laying hold, drawing to him and
his great little needs sustenance material and spiritual. More keen and
capable to penetrate were those thready little fibres than the irresistible
water-seeking tap-root of the cottonwood or the mesquite of the plains;
more powerful to clasp and to hold than the cablelike roots of the
rock-embracing cedar. The little new member was so much living sunshine,
gay, witching, brilliant, erratic in disposition as he was singular and
beautiful in his form and coloring, but always irresistibly endearing,
dangerously winning. When he had been Sammy Overholt only two weeks, he sat
at table with his parents one day and scornfully rejected the little plate
that was put before him.

"No!" he cried, sharply. "No, no! I won't have it--ole nassy plate!"

"W'y, baby! W'y, Sammy," deprecated Cornelia, "that's yo' own little plate
that mammy washed for you. You mustn't call it naisty."

"Hit air nassy," insisted young Samuel. "Hit got 'pecks--see!" and the
small finger pointed to some minute flaw in the ware which showed as little
dots on the white surface.

Cornelia, who, though mild and serene, was possessed of firmness and a
sense of justice, would have had the matter fairly settled. "He ort not to
cut up this-away, John," she urged. "He ort to take his little plate and