5

James Kerby Ward

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generation ever thought about being. Nowadays you hear young men and
girls a-saying that they are tired. Why I wouldn't think of saying
the work myself, and neither would dad, would you?"

Mr. Ward smiled at her and said: "I reckon we done right well.
We coulda done better though if we hadn't had so much sickness. You
know that takes a lot of money for doctors and medicine and for hospi-
tals. I had to have my wife operated on a year or two ago and we are
just now a-gettin out of that debt.

"That boy of mine, nodding toward the dining room where the boy
sat at the table working a cross-word puzzle, has been healthy like me.
It's the wimmen folks that're always ailing. William there had been
real smart. He's been graduated from every school that he ever went
to; the soda-jerking school graduated him, too. That's his diploma
a-hanging there on the wall over the piano. He's bought and paid for
everything he has had since he was a little feller of 14; so you can see
that I ain't proud of him much!

That's his car out there, that new Plymouth. He's bought five
cars and one motorcycle. I did help him pay for his motorcycle, but
all the rest he done by hisself."

At this William rose from the table and came into the room saying:
"I wish Dad had another boy to talk about besides me." He was a dark,
tall, and quite handsome boy. He tossed the paper into his mother's
lap. "Keep this for me, I didn't finish it, but I got to go. Have I
got a clean shirt?" He came toward the divan where I was sitting and I
noticed for the first time that he was in his stocking feet and his

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