ways called, Sykes, 'cause his father was dead and the title of the family descended on him. He was study in' for a minister, but he didn't know preachin' from prayin', and I've cut up the most shines with him and he never found it out. He wanted to know one day what we was goin' to have for dinner, and I told him, a dead calf."
"A dead calf!" says he, "I shan't eat any of it."
"'Very well,' says I, 'you can do just as you like, but I guess the rest on 'em will be glad enough to eat it.' So he didn't eat any, and looked at 'em so wishful as if he wanted to tell 'em, which was just what I wanted, but he didn't. The next day we was goin' to have a chicken for dinner, and there was a little bit of a hen coop out in the yard which I got and cleaned up to put on the table with alive chicken in it, and says I to him, 'thinkin' you wouldn't eat a dead chicken I've got a live one for you,' and then I guess he understood what the dead calf meant."
"Where did he preach when he got through studying?"
"In the kitchen. He was the awkwardest man you ever did see, besides bein' so scatter-brained. His hands come down half-way between his knees and' his toes, and his shoulders reached the top of his ears. He had green eyes, white eyebrows, and yellow hair that stuck up like the quills of a porcupine on his head. He used to come into the kitchen to practice, and the way he'd fling his arms np, they'd touch the plasterin', and he'd bring his feet down with such vengeance they shook down the stove-pipe once."
