176 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
"brute," and sometimes as a "cow-brute"; while we 
are told of a certain cat that it was "afraid of a man- 
person." Bread that does not rise is "sad," while an 
old or ill-kept horse is "sorry." "That 's good enough 
for a hireling," the woman says of the coat she gives 
the hired boy. And one frequently hears the expres- 
sion, " I 'm no hireling." When you ask a man who is 
driving a stake in the ground what he is doing, he 
may tell you that he is "jest pounding in a stob," 
and one looking for a boundary line was heard to say, 
" There ought to be a little old stob somewhere here." 
The old plural form of words ending in st yet sur- 
vives in the mountains, where the people speak of 
the "nestes" of the hens, the "postes" of the fence, 
the " waistes" of the dresses, pronouncing the words 
in two syllables. It may be said in passing that the 
word "waist" is generally replaced by "body," 
while the skirt of the dress is the "tail" — and one 
can imagine the agitated feelings of the newly ar- 
rived New England lady to whom a mountain man 
came, asking if she could not sell him a "body" for 
his wife, as she already had a "tail," and wanted to 
go to church. But this is a diversion, and returning 
to the more serious subject of antiquated speech one 
finds that "done" expressing past action, as a sup- 
plement to the auxiliary "have," is universally used. 
"He's done gone," "he's done hooked up the horse 
[to the wagon]," " he 's done filled the water-bucket," 
"she's done baked the bread"; one hears it all the 
time, and upon occasion one is informed, of a com- 
pleted action, that "he's done done it." 
