Shocky stuck to his point most positively.
"Yes, I was, you little tow-headed fool! I didn't take you kase I was good, not a bit of it.

I hated Bill Jones what keeps the poor-house, and I knowed him and Pete would get you bound to some of their click, and I didn't want no more thieves raised; so when your mother hobbled, with you a-leadin' her, poor blind thing! all the way over here on that winter night, and said, 'Mr.Pearson, you're all the friend I've got, and I want you to save my boy,' why, you see I was selfish as ever I could be in takin' of you.

Your mother's cryin' sot me a-cryin' too.
We're all selfish in everything, akordin' to my tell.

Blamed ef we ha'n't, Miss Hawkins, only sometimes I'd think you was real benev'lent ef I didn't know we war all selfish." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 19: Absurd as this speech seems, it is a literal transcript of words spoken in the author's presence by a woman who, like Miss Hawkins, was born in Massachusetts.] [Footnote 20: When the first edition of this book appeared, the critic who analyzed the dialect in _The Nation_ confessed that he did not know what to "crate" meant.

It was a custom in the days of early Indiana barbarism for the youngsters of a village, on spying a sleeping drunkard, to hunt up a "queensware crate"-- one of the cages of round withes in which crockery was shipped.