"I guess if it's good enough for you it is for me," he answered
evasively.
"No, it ain't," she said. "I always b'en used to it, and I can see
from your talk that you've got used to something different already.
Well, it's right, Lem. You're a good boy, and I want you should get
the good of Boston, all you can. We don't any of us begrutch it to
ye; and what I came up to say now was, don't you scrimp yourself
down there to send home to us. We got a roof over our heads, and we
can keep soul and body together somehow; we always have, and we
don't need a great deal. But I want you should keep yourself nicely
dressed down to Boston, so 't you can go with the best; I don't want
you should feel anyways meechin' on account of your clothes. You got
a good figure, Lem; you take after your father. Sometimes I wish you
was a little bigger; but _he_ wa'n't; and he had a big spirit.
He wa'n't afraid of anything; and they said if he'd come out o' that
battle where he was killed, he'd 'a' b'en a captain. He was a good
man."
She had hardly ever spoken so much of his father before; he knew now
by the sound of her voice in the dim room that the tears must be in
her eyes; but she governed herself and went on.
"What I wanted to say was, don't you keep sendin' so much o' your
money home, child. It's yours, and I want you should have it; most
of it goes for patent medicines, anyway, when it gets here; we can't
keep Reuben from buying 'em, and he's always changin' doctors.
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