Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud-looking over something or other, and she leans over and whispers to the old man: "Shall I bring it out, Lemuel ?" The old man, he shakes his head, no.

But she slips into the house anyhow, and fetches out a little book with a pale green cover to it, and hands it to the doctor.
"Bless my soul," says Doctor Kirby, looking at the old man, "you don't mean to say you write verse yourself ?" The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up into the roots of his white hair, and down into his white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.
"Mother," he says, "yo' shouldn't have done that!" They had had a boy years before, and he had died, but he always called her mother the same as if the boy was living.

He goes into the house and gets his pipe, and brings it out and lights it, acting like that book of poetry was a mighty small matter to him.

But he looks at Doctor Kirby out of the corner of his eyes, and can't keep from getting sort of eager and trembly with his pipe; and I could see he was really anxious over what the doctor was thinking of them poems he wrote.

The doctor reads some of 'em out loud.
Well, it was kind of home-made poetry, Old Daddy Withers's was.