Losing Battles by Eudora Welty

at it,” said Aunt Birdie. “They locked up the sweetest and hardest-working boy in Banner and Boone County and maybe in all Creation.”
    “But he never got a whipping at home, I reckon, for all the trouble he caused you?” asked Aunt Cleo.
    “We whipped Ella Fay,” said Miss Beulah.
    “Hey, Ella Fay, did you cry, darlin’?” Aunt Birdie called.
    “You could’ve heard me clear down to the store,” Ella Fay called from inside the house.
    “Good.”
    “But I’d stick that ring in his face again if I had it back right now,” she called sweetly.
    “How many more chances do you suppose you’ve got coming to you?” called her mother sharply.
    “Well, a lot grew out of one little ring, didn’t it?” remarked Aunt Cleo.
    “Even Sister Cleo sees that! And I’ll tell you once more that’s exactly what old Judge Moody lost sight of!” cried Miss Beulah. “The ring itself!”
    “Not having it there in front of his eyes to remind him,” said Aunt Beck sympathetically.
    “Yes’m, it would’ve been a little mite different for Jack and us all today if he’d contented himself with spilling open that safe there in the store, and fishing out the ring, and carrying the ring home in his shirt pocket, and delivering it back to Granny. But he’s a man! Done it the man’s way,” said Aunt Nanny.
    “He did his best,” Miss Beulah cried. “And it was a heap more trouble! For everybody!”
    Mr. Renfro ran his eye over the parade of melons he had lined up there on the porch, then passing along them spanked each one. They resounded like horses ready to go.
    “Oh, I’ve brought mine up on praise!” cried Miss Beulah, glaring after him.
    “You get the credit, Beulah!” Aunt Birdie cried. “You get the credit for the wonderful children they are!”
    “And I’ll keep it up to my dying day!” she shrieked in their faces. “Praise! With now and then a little switching to even it up.”
    “It’s the girls that gets the switchings,” Elvie said, and bolted.
    Aunt Nanny grinned and said, “And all this time, that ring may be laying down yonder in the Banner road in front of Stovall’s store, looking no more’n a little bit of tin, a piece of grit! Bet it is right now! But you’ve all walked on it a hundred times! And if it had teeth it’d bite you.”
    “I tell you lost’s lost,” said Miss Beulah, and passed the pan with the last piece of gingerbread in it, which Miss Lexie didn’t mind taking. “And my son in the pen for the trouble he took to save it.”

    “So here’s all these little sisters and a little brother, with a cripple daddy and with uncles that’s had to scatter, and Grandpa and Granny Vaughn and their broken hearts, and Beulah that’s besideherself for a spell, all doing without Jack. And after Jack had stayed out of school himself to give the little ones their chance, they had to pass up their own schooling half the time, smart as they was—” Uncle Percy was trying to get the story back from them.
    “Well, Vaughn did Jack’s work and some of mine, and I did his, and the girls they scrubbed and hauled and fetched and carried, and did every bit of their own part, and that was the system we used,” said Miss Beulah.
    “And Vaughn trying to trot even for little Mis’ Comfort when his mother told him,” said Aunt Birdie.
    “I couldn’t let her accept charity!” cried Miss Beulah.
    “She did it anyway, behind your back,” said Aunt Beck. “Our preacher carried her with him to the courthouse and they came back with a big box of commodities.”
    “Pity her !” came cries.
    “Our preacher says further there wasn’t anything worse served him in the United States Army than what he got at Boone County Courthouse last December.”
    “And here was the baby put in her appearance. Lady May Renfro, bless her little heart, she come as soon as she could,” Aunt Beck said.
    Lady May’s neck, like the stem of a new tulip, held poised its perfect little globe. She had heard her