Читать книгу Goose Creek Folks. A Story of the Kentucky Mountains онлайн

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At last Si Quinn leaned back with a long sigh of satisfaction. “I reckon you’ve ’bout saved my life, Tally. I war beginnin’ ter feel hit warn’t much use ter hold on ter this world when thar warn’t nobody seemin’ ter care speshul. Then you came along jest as though you’d been blowed acrost the mountings. I’m mighty cur’us ’bout hit, Tally. Only a couple o’ days ago, Dan Gooch looked in and said you-uns, and Ab and Gincy, hed started fer school. Did the folks down thar reckon you’d hed ’nough larnin’ and send you back?”

Talitha hesitated. She wisely felt the need of being very cautious as to the report which would go abroad. “We did go,” she acknowledged, “but the Girls’ Hall was full—just running over, the dean said—and the folks around had taken all they could. There wasn’t another one could be squeezed in, so I came—back,” she concluded, a renewed sense of her disappointment nearly overwhelming her.

“Whar’s Gincy?” demanded the old man keenly.

“Oh, she stayed. She hasn’t ever had a chance, you know. She’d have been terribly disappointed to have had to come home, and so would her father; he’s been lottin’ on it all summer. I’m so glad they let her stay,” Talitha added, fervently hoping that her secret had not slipped out unaware.