UNDER THE PLUM TREES
move a finger—not even looking around when she disappeared like a snake sliding through the grass.
For a long time nothing moved. Then the guitar fell, pang-tang! and Jon said something that got mixed up with the music.
I got up, quiet, and went over and sat down aside of Jonthy. He just looked up, surprised to see me there, but said nothing. I was sorry for him. At last I pulls him up and leads him off to bed.
"Boy," says I, nice and kind, when we got to his room, "no woman is worth dishonor. No one woman can be won—or if won, kept—by dishonor—not even that she goes after herself. Your daddy and Dave are Union—to the backbone. Your mother was—that's dead. This old house is—to the chimley tops. There never was any such doings under its roof. General George Washington slept under it. Jonthy, what are you?"
He just looked at me, crazy, like he'd never seen me before.
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