"Why, she couldn't fly to Heaven with wings a mile wide, and what use could they make of her if she got there ?" "I can't see a thing she'd be good for except a hitching post," said Leon, "and I guess they don't let horses in.

Let's go home." He acted sick and I felt that way; so we went, but the last glimpse of Sabethany remained with me.
As my head went down that day, I saw that Miss Amelia looked exactly like her.

You would have needed a pick-ax or a crowbar to flake off even a tiny speck of her.

When I had waited for my head to be cracked, until I had time to remember that a Crusader didn't dodge and hide, I looked up, and there she stood with the ruler lifted; but now she had turned just the shade of the wattles on our fightingest turkey gobbler.
"Won't you please forgive me ?" I never knew I had said it until I heard it, and then the only way to be sure was because no one else would have been likely to speak at that time.
Miss Amelia's arm dropped and she glared at me.

I wondered whether I ever would understand grown people; I doubted if they understood themselves, for after turning to stone in a second--father said it had taken Sabethany seven years--and changing to gobbler red, Miss Amelia suddenly began to laugh.