Then, this spring, I had to go and have a bout with typhoid.
I ought to be dead, with all I've had,--but here I am, alive and
happy, and if you keep on feeding me as you have been for the past
three days, I'll live forever."
"You mustn't overdo, Courtney," warned the farmer's wife. "Your ma
sent you out here to get well, and I feel a kind of responsibility
for you. I guess it's about time you was off to bed. Come on, Amos.
It isn't going to bring rain any sooner for you to be setting out
here watching for it."
Old Caleb had his say. "I suppose it was all right for you to serve
with the British, Court, but if you'd waited a little while longer
you might have carried a gun over there under the Stars and Stripes.
But, as you say, you couldn't bear to wait. I give you credit for
it. I'm derned glad to see one member of the Thane family that had
the nerve to volunteer. At the time of the Civil War your grandpa
was what we call a slacker in these days. He hired a feller to go
in his place, and when that feller was killed and a second call
for volunteers come up, dogged if he didn't up and hire another
one. One of your grandpa's brothers skipped off to Canada so's he
wouldn't have to serve, and the other,--his name was George Washington
Thane, by the way,--accidentally shot two of his fingers off while
his company was in camp down at Crawfordsville, gettin' ready to
go down and meet Morgan's Riders,--and that let him out.
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