Read Fair and Tender Ladies for Free Online Page B

and forth, first one to the other you know. She said, everbody knowed Old Dry Fry. And Old Dry Fry liked to eat so much, he wuld eat at two or three houses sometimes after meeting, and one time when he was eating, he et so much that he up and died. Well in the house where he died lived a man named Ray Doolittle and he said, Law me! We will be hung for murder! and so he wrapped Old Dry Fry up in a quilt and taken him down the road and leaned him up agin another fellers door. And when this other fellers old woman opened the door that follering day, why Old Dry Fry fell in the house and everbody said, Law me! its Old Dry Fry dead, we will be hung for murder! For everbody knowed Old Dry Fry.
    So they put him in a corncrib and then they taken him out in the dead of nigt and set him up in the bresh by the high road, and direckly a rich man come along, and some highway robbers come up and shot at him until they had cotched him and took all his money, and then they let him go. This rich mans name was Old Moneybags Macintosh, and he run off crying to beat the band.
    Then it got full ligt, and them highway robbers seed Old Dry Fry setting up there dead in the bresh by the side of the road, and they said, Law me! its Old Dry Fry dead as a post, we will be hung for murder! For everbody knowed Old Dry Fry.
    So they taken Old Fry down to the riverbank and propped him up by a willer tree, and he stayed rigt there until a little old fiesty boy come along and said Ho there, Old Dry Fry! For everbody knowed Old Dry Fry. And when Old Dry Fry didn’t say nothing, this little fiesty boy said, I reckon you think you are too good to talk, Old Dry Fry, and when Old Dry Fry didnt say nothing then , why this little fiesty boy just poked him in the river with a willer stick and run off down the road. Now there was a old woman down there fishing for bass-fish and Lord, she cotched Old Dry Fry. And she said, Law me! Hit is Old Dry Fry as dead as a stone, I will be hung for murder! For everbody knowed Old Dry Fry.
    And the sisters passed the story around, back and forth between them, and by and by we was all laghing and laghing, even serios Ethel and glummy little old Garnie and even Momma, well she was not laghing but she had set down ther by Daddy and she had left off clutching her skirt. They is something very funny about saying Old Dry Fry over and over. So the story goes on, it goes back and forth betwixt Gaynelle and Virgie Cline until at the end of it, we was dubbled up laghing and Old Dry Fry had ben put in a poke and tyed onto a horse and the last anybody knowed, the horse was galloping off for Kentucky under the ligt of the moon.
    And then they toled a bunch more including Mutsmag wich Silvaney asked for, now you see how good she can recollect. So the sisters toled Mutsmag wich is about a old woman that had three gals, Poll, Betts and Mutsmag, but they all treated Mutsmag mean, she had to do all the work while theyd lay in bed of a morning and not give her nothing to eat but leftovers and old sour milk. Then the old woman up and died, and the girls had to go in the world to seek ther fortune and they said Mutsmag, you come too, but she had to carry all ther plunder and they wuldnt give her no journey cakes. But after many adventures a giant comes along, and he eats up Poll and Betts, and then he turns into a handsome Prince and tuck Mutsmag off to a faraway country where she was the Queen.
    I loved that one. But now it was late and the littluns had fell asleep and even Ethel was fixing to fall asleep, you culd tell by her eyes drooping down. The Cline sisters stirred and rustled as if they was fixing to go. Me and Silvaney was the onliest ones still up and listening. And I recollected how, if Daddy had not been so sick, he wuld of been telling too, he loved the old storys so, and I recollected what all he used to say about Old Christmas Eve, how alder buds will bust and leaf out, and bees will roar in a beegum like ther fixing to swarm, and