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Kephart the Hunter

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  • "Let me pack yer poke" 25 drank out of the selfsame lard bucket. The very tone of her voice said, "What backwardness!" Progress is a relative matter, after all! She was all interest in my doings. When she found where I was staying she thought more of me. If I was a friend of Minerva's I must be worth while for Minerva had been "away to B'reer" two winters. I told her how my little friend had walked a couple of miles to meet me although she was not sure what time I would start. My companion's comment made me feel how important a person Minerva was in that community. "Warn't ye right proud to hop in with 'Nervy up yander?" Later we went to meet "teacher." The school had three teachers but one evidently held so preeminent a place in the child's mind that the other two hardly counted. She was "teacher." We left the geese still on guard and I lightly grasped my bundle and hung it over my stick. She seized it quickly. "Let me pack your poke a spell," she said with such good will that I turned it over to her. The "teacher" did not appear but "Bill" and "Greenberry" soon came in sight. They seemed older than the boys back at school, so after she had chattered on about them awhile I asked what class Greenberry was in. She laughed merrily over my ignorance. Why, Greenberry was a teacher! He had finished the eighth grade and had a first class certificate. But it was with him as with "mam" and "pap" and even with "gran'pappy." First names were far more common than the prefix Mr. or Mrs. Tildy was Reppy's mam. Jake was Docy's pap and so on. "But what about Bill? He was older than
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