Amos chuckled and with a loud "Whoa" brought the horse to a standstill.
Aunt Rebecca climbed from the carriage, picked up the trophy of good
luck and then took her seat beside her brother again, a smile upon her
lined old face.
"That's three horseshoes I have now. I never let one lay. I pick up all
I find and take them home and hang them on the old peach tree in the
back yard. I know they bring good luck. Mebbe if I hadn't picked up all
them three a lot o' trouble would come to me."
"Have it your way," conceded Uncle Amos. "They don't do you no hurt,
anyhow. But, Rebecca," he said as they came within sight of her little
house, "you ought to get your place painted once."
"Ach, my goodness, what for? When it's me here alone. I think the house
looks nice. My flowers are real pretty this year, once. Course, I don't
fool with them like you do. I have the kind that don't take much
tendin' and come up every year without bein' planted. Calico flowers
and larkspur and lady-slippers are my kind. This plantin' and hoein' at
flowers is all for nothin'. It's all right to work so at beans and
potatoes and things you can eat when they grow, but what good are
flowers but to look at! I done my share of hoein' and diggin' and
workin' in the ground. I near killed myself when Jonas lived yet, in
them tobacco patches. I used to say to him still, we needn't work so
hard and slave like that after we had so much money put away, but he
was for workin' as long as we could, and so we kept on till he went. He
used to say money gets all if you begin to spend it and don't earn
more. Jonas was savin'."
"He sure was, that he was," seconded Uncle Amos with a twinkle in his
eyes. "Savin' for you and now you're savin' for somebody that'll make
it fly when you go, I bet. Some day you'll lay down and die and your
money'll be scattered. If you leave me any, Becky," he teased her,
"I'll put it all in an automobile."
"What, them wild things! Road-hogs, I heard somebody call 'em, and I
think it's a good name. My goodness, abody ain't safe no more since
they come on the streets. They go toot, toot, and you got to hop off to
one side in the mud or the ditch, it don't matter to them. I hate them
things! Only don't never take me to the graveyard in one of them."
"By that time," said Uncle Amos, "they'll have flyin' machine hearses;
they'll go faster."
"My goodness, Amos, how you talk! Ain't you ashamed to make fun at your
old sister that way! But Mom always said when you was little that you
seemed a little simple, so I guess you can't help it."