That's why I keeps 'em round me. They's better than a
watch-dog to bark at strangers, and, caze they steals all their life, I
love' em. Blue-jay, by Ged! is ole Pat Cannon's bird."
"Grandma," Hulda said, "I wish you had a large, elegant garden. You love
flowers."
"Purty things I always _would_ have," exclaimed the bulldog-bodied
woman, with an oath; "bright things I loved when I was a gal, and traded
what I had away fur 'em. Direckly I got big, I traded ugly things fur
'em, like niggers. I'd give a shipload of niggers fur an apern full of
roses."
"Florida, they say, is beautiful, grandma, and flowers are everywhere
there."
"Yes, gal, they says so; but I don't never expect to go thar.
Margaretty, your mommy, likes it thar. Delaware's my home; some of 'em
hates me yer, and the darned lawyers tries to indict me, but I'll live
on the line till they shoves me over it, whar I've been cock of the walk
sence I was a gal."
As Hulda, also barefooted, but moulded like the flowers, so that her
feet seemed natural as the naked roots, carried the boxes around to the
glass beds encircling a chimney--dahlias, autumnal crocuses or saffrons,
tri-colored chrysanthemums or gold-flowers, and the orange-colored
marigolds--the elder woman, resting on her hoe, smelled the turpentine
of a row of tall sunflowers and twisted one off and put it in her
wide-brimmed Leghorn hat.
"When I hornpipe it on the tight rope," Levin heard her chuckle, "one of
these yer big flowers must die with me.
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