User:Alvi62/sandbox

A Mother in Mannville The orphanage is high in the Carolina mountains. I was there in the autumn. I wanted quiet, isolation, to do some troublesome writing. I wanted mountain air to blow out the malaria from too long a time in the subtropics. I was homesick too, for the flaming of maples in October, and for corn shocks and pumpkins and black-walnut trees...I found hem all living in a cabin that belonged to the orphanage, half a mile beyond the orphanage farm. When I took the cabin, I asked for a boy or man to come and chop wood for the fireplace... I looked up from my typewriter one late afternoon, a little startled. A boy stood at the door and my pointer dog, my companion, was at his side and had not barked to warm me. The boy was probably twelve years old, but undersized. He wore overalls and a torn shirt, and was barefooted He said, "I can chop some wood today." ""Size don't matter, chopping wood," he said. ""Some of the big boys don't chop good. "You? But you're small." .... I've been chopping wood at the orphanage a long time." "Very well. There's the ax. Go ahead and see what you car do. Iwent back to work, closing the doo.. He began to chop. The blows were thythmic and steady, and shortly L had forgotten nim, the sound no more of an interruption than a consistent rain. I suppose an hour an a half passed and I heard the boy's steps on the cabin stoop..The boy said, "I have to go to supper now," he said, "I can come again tomorrow." said, ""T'll pay you now for what you've done," thinking 1 should probably have insist on an older boy... We went together back of the cabin. An astonishing amount of solid wood had bee cut...."But you've done as much as a man,"' I said. This is a splendid pile." I looked at him, actually, for the first time. His hair was the color of the comn shocks and his yes, very direct, were like the mountain sky when rain is pending-gray, with a shadowing of that miraculous bluc....I gave him a quarter. "You may come tomorrow afternoon," I said, "and thank you very much." He looked at me,and at the coin, and scemed to want to speak, but could not, and turned away.........