"Yesterday I near 'bout bus' open with
wantin' to go. My mother she's near 'bout eighty, and she got Miss
Lizzie to write me and beg me to come for this here Christmas. Miss
Lizzie is old Major Pleasants's youngest old-maid daughter. He's got
three of 'em. He was my mother's marster, old Major Pleasants was,
and he sold me the land my mother's livin' on now. He didn't charge
nothin' much for it, but I had to have a house built, and buy some
pigs and some furniture and git a cow, and I bought two of them
street-car mules what was in Richmond when they put the 'lectric cars
on down there. 'T'was the first city in the United States to have
'em, Richmond was. They thought them mules was wore out, but there
ain't no friskier ones in the county than they is, I tell you now. I
ain't been home for four years--"
"And your mother is eighty?"
"Yes, sir, that's what they tell me, though she say she don't know
herself 'ceptin' she had four chillern which was good size when the
war broke out. I belong to the second crop. My mother done had
nineteen chillern, the triflinest, good-for-nothin'est lot the Lord
ever let live on this earth, if I do say it, and ain't a one of 'em
what does a thing for her, savin' 'tis me and Eliza--Eliza she's my
sister and lives with her.
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