She is out
in a minute with a clipping from a newspaper and
hands it over to Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid
with copper-toed boots. The doctor reads it all
the way through, and then he hands it back without
saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle
around about the housework purty soon and the
old man looks at the doctor and says:
"Well, you see, don't you?"
"Yes," says the doctor, very gentle.
"I wouldn't have HER know for the world," says
Daddy Withers. "_I_ know and YOU know that news-
paper piece is just simply poking fun at my poetry,
and making a fool of me, the whole way through.
As soon as I read it over careful I saw it wasn't
really praise, though there was a minute or two I
thought my recognition had come. But SHE don't
know it ain't serious from start to finish. SHE was
all-mighty pleased when that piece come out in
print. And I don't intend she ever shall know it
ain't real praise."
His wife was so proud when that piece come out
in that New York paper, he said, she cried over it.
She said now she was glad they had been doing
without things fur years and years so they could
get them little books printed, one after the other,
fur now fame was coming. But sometimes, Daddy
Withers says, he suspicions she really knows he has
been made a fool of, and is pertending not to see it,
fur his sake, the same as he is pertending fur HER
sake.
Pages:
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240