mind him. I want to show you round my garden, Emily. It’s mine. Elizabeth bosses the farm; but she lets me run the garden—to make up for pushing me into the well.”
“Did she do that?”
“Yes. She didn’t mean to, of course. We were just children—I was here on a visit—and the men were putting a new hood on the well and cleaning it. It was open—and we were playing tag around it. I made Elizabeth mad—forget what I said—’twasn’t hard to make her mad, you understand—and she made to give me a bang on the head. I saw it coming—and stepped back to get out of the way—and down I went, head first. Don’t remember anything more about it. There was nothing but mud at the bottom—but my head struck the stones at the side. I was took up for dead—my head all cut up. Poor Elizabeth was—” Cousin Jimmy shook his head, as if to intimate that it was impossible to describe how or what poor Elizabeth was. “I got about after a while, though—pretty near as good as new. Folks say I’ve never been quite right since—but they only say that because I’m a poet, and because nothing ever worries me. Poets are so scarce in Blair Water folks don’t understand them, and most people worry so much, they think you’re not right if you don’t worry.”
“Won’t you recite some of your poetry to me, Cousin Jimmy?” asked Emily eagerly.
“When the spirit moves me I will. It’s no use to ask me when the spirit don’t move me.”
“But how am I to know when the spirit moves you, Cousin Jimmy?”
“I’ll begin of my own accord to recite my compositions. But I’ll tell you this—the spirit generally moves me when I’m boiling the pigs’ potatoes in the fall. Remember that and be around.”
“Why don’t you write your poetry down?”
