sut'ny t'ink too much for a young gyurl."

"I'm eighteen, yet uncle and aunt act toward me in some ways as if I
were still ten years old. How can I help thinking? The thoughts
come. You're a great one to talk against thinking. Uncle says you
don't do much else, and that your thoughts are just like the smoke
of your pipe."

Aun' Jinkey bridled indignantly at first, but, recollecting herself,
said quietly: "I knows my juty ter ole mars'r en'll say not'n gin
'im. He bring you up en gib you a home, Miss Lou. You must
reckermember dat ar."

"I'm in a bad mood, I suppose, but I can't help my thoughts, and
it's kind of a comfort to speak them out. If he only WOULD give me a
home and not make it so much like a prison! Uncle's honest, though,
to the backbone. On my eighteenth birthday he took me into his
office and formally told me about my affairs. I own that part of the
plantation on the far side of the run. He has kept all the accounts
of that part separate, and if it hadn't been for the war I'd have
been rich, and he says I will be rich when the war is over and the
South free. He said he had allowed so much for my bringing up and
for my education, and that the rest was invested, with his own
money, in Confederate bonds. That is all right, and I respect uncle
for his downright integrity, but he wants to manage me just as he
does my plantation. He wishes to produce just such crops of thoughts
as he sows the seeds of, and he would treat my other thoughts like
weeds, which must be hoed out, cut down and burned. Then you see he
hasn't GIVEN me a home, and I'm growing to be a woman. If I am old
enough to own land, am I never to be old enough to own myself?"