I don't reckon you'd remember me?
Hank Graves, that used to pack yuh around on his back, and fill yuh up on dried prunes--when dried prunes was worth money?
Yuh used to call 'em 'frumes,' and--Why, it was me with your dad when the Indians pot-shot him at Chimney Rock; and it was me helped your mother straighten things up so she could pull out, back where she come from.

She never took to the West much.

How is she?
Dead?
Too bad; she was a mighty fine woman, your mother was.
"Well, I'll-be-hanged! Bud Thurston little, tow-headed Bud that used to holler for 'frumes' if he seen me coming a mile off.

Doggone your measly hide, where's all them pink apurns yuh used to wear ?" He leaned back and laughed--a silent, inner convulsion of pure gladness.
Philip Thurston was, generally speaking, a conservative young man and one slow to make friends; slower still to discard them.

He was astonished to feel a choky sensation in his throat and a stinging of eyelids, and a leap in his blood.