"She was just as helpless as a young baby," said Grandma Padgett,
sitting down again by the fire. "I'll have a doctor look at that
child when we go through Richmond. She acts like she'd been drugged."
J. D. Matthews having finished--his dishwashing, sat down in the
shadow some distance from the outspoken woman in spectacles, and her
family.
"Now come up here," urged aunt Corinne, "and sing it all over--what
you was singing before Ma Padgett came."
J. D. ducked his head and chuckled, but remained in his shadow.
"Awh-come on," urged Robert Day "Zene'll sing 'Barb'ry Allen' if
you'll sing your song again."
Zene glanced uneasily at Grandma Padgett, and said he must look at
the horses. "Barb'ry Allen" was a ballad he had indulged the children
with when at a distance from her ears.
But the tea and the hour, and her Virginia memories through which
that old sing-song ran like the murmur of bees, made Grandma Padgett
propitious, and she laid her gracious commands on Zene first, and J.
D. Matthews afterwards. So that not only "Barb'ry Allen" was sung,
but J. D.'s ditty, into which he plunged with nasal twanging and much
personal enjoyment.
"It's why he didn't ever get married," explained aunt Corinne,
constituting herself prologue.
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