TWO:It was a warm, bright March day, with the North Georgia mountains rapidly robing themselves in fresh green, to welcome the coming Spring. The effervescent boys had entirely forgotten the worries of the previous night, and were frolicking in the bright sunshine as if "out-at-recess" from school.He was happy. Slowly he realized that he had hardly ever been happy before.

TWO:Worse yet. As he grew stronger and better able to take care of himself Maria dropped the familiarity of the nurse, and began putting him on the footing of a young gentleman and a guest of the house. She came no more into the room with the basin of warm water, and got him ready for his breakfast. She toned down carefully with every improvement in his strength. First, she merely brought him the basin and towel, and then as he grew able to go about she would rap on his door and tell him to come out and get ready for breakfast. Shorty began to feel that he was losing much by getting well, and that his convalescence had been entirely too rapid."Um��um-um," hemmed the Deacon, getting red in the face, and avoiding answering the question by a vigorous stirring of the fire, while Si slily winked at Shorty. "I impressed that on son Jed's mind when he enlisted," continued the brother. "Jed was always a good, straight up-and-down boy; never gave me or his mother a minute's uneasiness. I told him to have no more to do with cards than with smallpox; to avoid liquor as he would the bite of a rattlesnake; to take nothin' from other people that he didn't pay full value for; that swearin' was a pollution to the lips and the heart. I know that Jed hearkened to all that I said, and that it sank into his heart, and that he'll come back, if it's God's will that he shall come back, as good a boy as when he went away."

TWO:He couldn't think of anything to say. Finally he settled on: "My name's Dodd," as the simplest and quickest way of breaking the ice that surrounded him."Great grief," sighed he, looking at the result. "You wriggle about like so many eels. Might as well try to line up so many kittens. Won't you straighten Up and keep straight?" Then came a renewal of the noisy discussion, with mutual blaming of one another.