It would have been such
an easy way out of it had it been really dead!
"'She mustn't know that it is living,' I said to
the nurse, finally," says Colonel Tom, going on with
his story. I had been watching Miss Lucy's face
as Colonel Tom talked and she was so worked up
by that fight fur the kid's life she was breath-
less. But her eyes was cast down, I guess so her
brother couldn't see them. Colonel Tom goes on
with his story:
"'You don't mean--' said the nurse, startled.
"'No! No!' I said, 'of course--not that! But--
why should she ever know that it didn't die?'"
"'It is illegitimate?' asked the nurse.
"'Yes,' I said." The long and short of it was,
Colonel Tom went on to tell, that the nurse went out
and got her mother. Which the two of them lived
alone, only around the corner. And give the child
into the keeping of her mother, who took it away
then and there.
Colonel Tom had made up his mind there wasn't
going to be no bastards in the Buckner fambly.
And now that Miss Lucy thought it was dead he
would let her keep on thinking so. And that would
be settled for good and all. He figgered that it
wouldn't ever hurt her none if she never
knowed it.
The nurse's mother kept it all that week, and it
throve. Colonel Tom was coaxing of his sister to
go back to Tennessee.
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