Don't nobody on Flat Creek keer fer God, and I guess God don't keer fer Flat Creek.

But I would, though, ef he'd git my mother out of the poor-house and git Hanner away from Means's, and let me kiss my mother every night, you know, and sleep on my Hanner's arm, jes like I used to afore father died, you see." Ralph wanted to speak, but he couldn't.

And so Shocky, with his eyes looking straight ahead, and as if forgetting Ralph's presence, told over the thoughts that he had often talked over to the fence-rails and the trees.

"It was real good in Mr.Pearson to take me, wasn't it?
Else I'd a been bound out tell I was twenty-one, maybe, to some mean man like Ole Means.

And I a'n't but seven.