. She almost hated the sight of him, for
he was the memorial of her failure.
The boy did not guess these thoughts. He pulled up a stool and sat very
close to the bed, holding his mother's frail wrist in a sunburnt hand so
big that it might have been that of a lad half-way through his teens. He
had learned in the woods to be neat and precise in his ways, and his
movements, for all his gawky look, were as soft as a panther's.
"Like me to tell you a story?" he asked. "What about Uncle Mord's tale of
Dan'l Boone at the Blue Licks Battle?"
There was no response, so he tried again.
Or read a piece? It was the Bible last time, but the words is mighty
difficult. Besides you don't need it that much now. You're gettin' better.
. . . Let's hear about the ol'Pilgrim."
He found a squat duodecimo in the trunk, and shifted the skin curtain from
one of the window holes to get light to read by. His mother lay very still
with her eyes shut, but he knew by her breathing that she was not asleep.
He ranged through the book, stopping to study the crude pictures, and then
started laboriously to read the adventures of Christian and Hopeful after
leaving Vanity Fair--the mine of Demas, the plain called Ease, Castle
Doubting, and the Delectable Mountains.
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