" But the old
gentleman looked mighty serious, and his worry
settled into a frown between his eyes, and he turns
to me and says:
"Yo' must pardon us, sir, fo' neglecting to thank
yo' sooner." I told him that would be all right,
fur him not to worry none. And him and me and
Mandy, which was the nigger cook, got Bud into
the house and into his bed. And his mother gets
that busy ordering Mandy and the old gentleman
around, to get things and fix things, and make Bud
as easy as she could, that you could see she was one
of them kind of woman that gets a lot of satisfaction
out of having some one sick to fuss over. And after
quite a while George gets back with Doctor Porter.
He sets Bud's arm, and he locates the bullet in
him, and he says he guesses he'll do in a few weeks
if nothing like blood poisoning nor gangrene nor
inflammation sets in.
Only the doctor says he "reckons" instead of
he "guesses," which they all do down there. And
they all had them easy-going, wait-a-bit kind of
voices, and didn't see no pertic'ler importance
in their "r's." It wasn't that you could spell it
no different when they talked, but it sounded
different.
I eat my breakfast with the old gentleman, and
then I took a sleep until time fur dinner. They
wouldn't hear of me leaving that night.
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