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“How many hev you got?” he asked.

“Ten dozen,” says the boy.

“Git out!” says Dock. “There hain’t no ten dozen eggs in that basket!”

“Yes, there is,” says the boy, “fur I counted ’em myself.”

The Dock allowed that he wuzn’t goin’ to take nobody’s count on eggs; so he got that fool boy to stan’ there in the middle uv that hot peraroor, claspin’ his two hands together, while he, the Dock, counted them eggs out’n the basket one by one into the boy’s arms. Ten dozen eggs is a heap; you kin imagine, maybe, how that boy looked with his arms full uv eggs! When the Dock had got about nine dozen counted out he stopped all uv a suddint ‘nd said, “Wall, come to think on ‘t, I reckon I don’t want no eggs to-day, but I’m jest as much obleeged to you fur yer trubble.” And so he jumped back into the buggy ‘nd drove off.

Now, maybe that fool boy wuzn’t in a peck uv trubble! There he stood in the middle uv that hot–that all-fired hot–peraroor with his arms full uv eggs. What wuz there fur him to do? He wuz afraid to move, lest he should break them eggs; yet the longer he stood there the less chance there wuz uv the warm weather improvin’ the eggs.

Along in the summer of ’78 the fever broke out down South, ‘nd one day Dock made up his mind that as bizness wuzn’t none too good at home he’d go down South ‘nd see what he could do there. That wuz jest like one of Dock’s fool notions, we all said. But he went. In about six weeks along come a telegraph sayin’ that Dock wuz dead,–he’d died uv the fever. The minister went up to the homestead ‘nd broke the news gentle like to Dock’s mother; but, bless you! she didn’t believe it–she wouldn’t believe it. She said it wuz one uv Dock’s jokes; she didn’t blame him, nuther–it wuz her fault, she allowed, that Dock wuz allus that way about makin’ fun uv life ‘nd death. No, sir; she never believed that Dock wuz dead, but she allus talked like he might come in any minnit; and there wuz allus his old place set fur him at the table ‘nd nuthin’ wuz disturbed in his little room up-stairs. And so five years slipped by ‘nd no Dock come back, ‘nd there wuz no tidin’s uv him. Uv course, the rest uv us knew; but his mother–oh, no, she never would believe it.

At last the old lady fell sick, and the doctor said she couldn’t hold out long, she wuz so old ‘nd feeble. The minister who wuz there said that she seemed to sleep from the evenin’ uv this life into the mornin’ uv the next. Jest afore the last she kind uv raised up in bed and cried out like she saw sumthin’ that she loved, and she held out her arms like there wuz some one standin’ in the doorway. Then they asked her what the matter wuz, and she says, joyful like: “He’s come back, and there he stan’s jest as he used ter: I knew he wuz only jokin’!”

They looked, but they saw nuthin’; ‘nd when they went to her she wuz dead.

1888.