THE FOLKS-GARDEN
"Well," said Uncle Tucker meditatively, "I reckon a festibul on a
birthday can be taken as a kind of compliment to the Lord and no
special glorification to yourself. He instuted your first one Himself,
and I see no harm in jest a-marking of the years He sends you. What
are Sister Viney's special reasons against the junket?"
"Oh, I don't know what makes Aunt Viney feel this way!" exclaimed Rose
Mary with distress in her blue eyes that she raised to Uncle Tucker's,
that were bent benignly upon her as she stood in the barn door beside
him. "She says that as the Lord has granted her her fourscore years by
reason of great strength, she oughtn't to remind Him that He has
forgotten her by having an eighty-second birthday. Everybody in
Sweetbriar has been looking forward to it for a week, and it was going
to be such a lovely party. What shall we do? She says she just won't
have it, and Aunt Amandy is crying when Aunt Viney don't see it. She's
made up her mind, and I don't know what more to say to her."
"Rose Mary," said Uncle Tucker, with a quizzical smile quirking at the
corners of his mouth, "mighty often the ingredient of permanency is
left out in the making up of a woman's mind, one way or another. Can't
you kinder pervail with your Aunt Viney some? I've got a real hanker
after this little birthday to-do. Jest back her around to another view
of the question with a slack plow-line. Looks like it's too bad to--"
"Rose Mary, oh, Rose Mary, where are ye, child?" came a call in a
high, sweet old quaver of a voice from down the garden path, and Miss
Amanda hove in sight, hurrying along on eager but tottering little
feet. Her short, skimpy, gray skirts fluttered in the spring breezes
and her bright, old eyes peered out from the gray shawl she held over
her head with tremulous excitement. She was both laughing and panting
as Rose Mary threw her arm around her and drew her into the door of
the barn. "Sister Viney has consented in her mind about the party, all
along of a verse I was just now a-reading to her in our morning
lesson. Saint Luke says: '_It is meet that we should make merry and be
glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again_,' and at the
same minute the recollection of how sick Mr. Mark has been hit us
both. 'There now,' she says, 'you folks can jest go on with that party
to-day for the benefit of our young brother Everett's coming to so
good after all his sufferings. This time I will consider it as
instituted of the Lord, but don't nobody say birthday next April, if
I'm here, on no account whatever.' I take it as a special leading to
me to have read that verse this morning to Sister Viney, and won't
you please go over and tell Sally Rucker to go on with the cake, Rose
Mary? Sister Viney called Jennie over by sun-up, when she took this
notion, and told her to tell her mother not to make it, even if she
had already broke all the sixteen eggs."
"Yes, Aunt Amandy, I'll run over and tell Mrs. Rucker, and then we
will begin right away to get things ready. I am so glad Aunt Viney
is--"
"Rose Mamie, Rose Mamie," came another loud hail from up the path
toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy
setter frisking in his wake. "Aunt Viney says for you to come there to
her this minute. They is a-going to be the party and it's right by the
Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too. Tobe Poteet said 'shoo' when
I told him he couldn't come, 'cause they wasn't a-going to be no party
on account of worrying the Lord about forgetting Aunt Viney, and I
was jest a-going to knock him into stuffings, 'cause they can't
nobody say 'shoo' at the Bible or Aunt Viney neither, to me, when
there Aunt Viney called for us to go tell everybody that the party was
a-going off and be sure and come. I believe God let her call me before
I hit Tobe, 'cause I ain't never hit him yet, and maybe now I never
will have to." The General paused, and an expression of devout
thankfulness came into his small face at thus being saved the
necessity of administering chastisement to his henchman, Tobe the
adventurous.
"I believe he did, Stonie, and how thankful I am," exclaimed little
Miss Amanda, with real relief at this deliverance of young Tobe, who
was her especial, both self-elected and chosen, knight from the
General's cohorts.
"Yes'm," answered Stonie. "Come on now, Rose Mamie! Put your hand on
me, Aunt Amandy, and I'll go slow with you," and presenting his sturdy
little shoulder to Miss Amanda on one side and drawing Rose Mary
along with him on the other, Stonewall Jackson hurried them both away
to the house.
"Well," remarked Uncle Tucker to himself as he took up a measure of
grain from a bin in the corner of the feed-room and scattered some in
front of a row of half-barrel nests upon which brooded a dozen
complacent setting hens, "well, if the Lord has to pester with the
affairs of Sweetbriar to the extent Stonie and the sisters, Rose Mary,
too, are a-giving Him the credit of doing looks like we might be
a-getting more'n our share of His attentions. I reckon by the time He
gets all the women and children doings settled up for the day He finds
some of the men have slipped the bridle and gone. That would account
for some of these here wild covortings around in the world we hear
about by the newspapers. But He'll git 'em some day sure as--"
"Am I interrupting any confidence between you and the Mrs. Biddies,
Mr. Alloway?" asked Everett, as he stood in the barn door with a pan
in one hand and a bucket in the other.
"No, oh, no," answered Uncle Tucker with a laugh. "I was jest
remarking how the Almighty had the lasso of His love around the neck
of all the wild young asses a-galloping over the world and would throw
'em in His own time. Well, I hear you're a-going to get a sochul
baptism into Sweetbriar along about a hour before sundown. Better part
your hair in the middle and get some taller for your shoes."
"I will, most assuredly, if that's what's expected of me for the
ceremony," answered Everett with a delightful laugh. "Here's a pan of
delicacies for the hens, and this bucket is for you to bring some
shelled corn for Miss Rose Mary to parch for them, when you come to
the house."
"I'm not a-counting on going any time soon," answered Uncle Tucker
with a shrewd glance up at Everett as he came and stood in the
doorway beside the tall young man, who lounged against one of the door
posts. Uncle Tucker was himself tall, but slightly bent, lean and
brown, with great, gray, mystic eyes that peered out from under bushy
white brows. Long gray locks curled around his ears and a rampant
forelock stood up defiantly upon his wide, high brow. At all times his
firm old mouth was on the eve of breaking into a quizzical smile, and
he bestowed one upon Everett as he remarked further:
"The barn is man's instituted refuge in the time of mop and broom
cyclones in the house. I reckon you can't get on to your rock-picking
in the fields now, but you really hadn't oughter dig up an oil-well
to-day anyway; it might kinder overshadow the excitement of the
party."
"Mr. Alloway, has any other survey of this river bend been made
before?" asked Everett as he looked keenly at Uncle Tucker, while he
lit his cigar from the cob pipe the old gentleman accommodatingly
handed him.
"Well, yes, there was a young fellow came poking around here not so
long ago with a little hammer pecking at the rocks. I didn't pay much
attention to him, though. He never stayed but one day, and I was
a-cutting clover hay, and too busy to notice him much 'cept to ask him
in to dinner. He couldn't seem to manage his chicken dumplings for
feeding his eyes with Rose Mary, and he didn't have time to give up
much information about sech little things as oil-wells and phosphate
beds. You know, they has to be a good touch of frost over a man's ears
before he can tend to business, with good-looking dimity passing
around him." And Uncle Tucker laughed as he resumed the puffing of his
pipe.
"And after the frost they are not at all immune--to such dimity,"
answered Everett with an echo of Uncle Tucker's laugh, as a slight
color rose up under the tan of his thin face. As he spoke he ruffled
his own dark red mop of hair, which was slightly sprinkled with gray,
over his temples. Everett was tall, broad and muscular, but thin
almost to gauntness, and his face habitually wore the expression of
deep weariness. His eyes were red-brown and disillusioned, except when
they joined with his well-cut mouth in a smile that brought an almost
boyish beauty back over his whole expression. There was decided youth
in the glance he bestowed upon Uncle Tucker, whose attention was
riveted on the manoeuvers of the General and Tobe, who were busy with
a pair of old kitchen knives in an attack upon the grass growing
between the cracks of the front walk.
"So you have had no report as to what that survey was?" Everett asked
Uncle Tucker, again bringing him back to the subject in hand. "Do you
know who sent the man you speak of to prospect on your land?"
"Never thought to ask him," answered Uncle Tucker, still with the
utmost unconcern. "Maybe Rose Mary knows. Women generally carry a
reticule around with 'em jest to poke facts into that they gather
together from nothing put pure wantin'-to-know. Ask her."
And as he spoke Uncle Tucker began to busy himself getting out the
grease cans, with the evident intention of putting in a morning
lubricating the farm implements in general.
"Your friend, Mr. Gideon Newsome, said something about a rumor of
paying phosphate here in the Harpeth bend when I met him over in
Boliver before I came to Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to
look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and
fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?"
Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of
what might lay under the fields, the top of which he was so interested
in cultivating.
"Oh, I reckon not," answered Uncle Tucker, puffing away as he laid
out his monkey-wrenches. "The Honorable Gid is up to his neck in this
here no-dram wave what is a-sweeping around over the state and pretty
nigh rising up as high as the necks of even private liquor bottles.
Gid's not to say a teetotaler, but he had to climb into the bandwagon
skiff or sink outen sight. He's got to tie down his seat in the state
house with a white ribbon, and he's got no mind for fooling with
phosphate dirt. He's a mighty fine man, and all of Sweetbriar thinks a
heap of him. Do you want to help me lift this wagon wheel on to this
jack, so I can sorter grease her up against the next time I use her?"
"Say, Uncle Tuck, Aunt Viney says for you to come right there now and
bring Mr. Mark and a spade and a long string with you," came just at
the critical moment of balancing the notched plank under the revolving
wagon wheel, in Stonewall Jackson's young voice, which held in it
quite a trace of Miss Lavinia's decisive tone of command. Stonie
stood in the barn door, poised for instant return along the path of
duty to the front walk, only waiting to be sure his summons would be
obeyed. Stonie was sturdy, freckled, and in possession of Uncle
Tucker's big gray eyes, Rose Mary's curled mouth and more than a tinge
of Aunt Viney's austerity of manner.
"Better come on," he further admonished. "Rose Mary can't hold that
vine up much longer, and if she lets go they'll all fall down." And as
he raced up the path Everett followed almost as rapidly, urged on by
the vision of Rose Mary drooping under some sort of unsupportable
burden. Uncle Tucker brought up the rear with the spade and a long
piece of twine.
"Oh, I thought you would never come," laughed Rose Mary from half way
up the step-ladder as she lowered herself and a great bunch of budding
honeysuckle down into Everett's upstretched arms. "I held it up as
long as I could, but I almost let it tear the whole vine down."
[Illustration: "That's what comes from letting that shoot run
catawumpas"]
"That's what comes from letting that shoot run catawumpas three years
ago. I told you about it at the time, Tucker," said Miss Lavinia with
a stern glance at Uncle Tucker, who stood with spade and twine at the
corner of the porch.
Miss Lavinia sat in a large, calico-cushioned rocking-chair at the end
of the porch, and had been issuing orders to Rose Mary and little Miss
Amanda about the readjustment of the fragrant vine that trailed across
the end of the porch over her window and on out to a trellis in the
side yard. Her high mob cap sat on her head in an angle of aggression
always, and her keen black eyes enforced all commands issuing from her
stern old mouth.
"Now, Amandy, train that shoot straight while you're about it," she
continued. "It comes plumb from the roots, and I don't want to have to
look at a wild-growing vine right here under my window for all my
eighty-second and maybe last year."
"I've gone and misplaced my glasses and I can't hardly see," answered
Miss Amanda in her sweet little quaver that sounded like a silver bell
with a crack in it. "Lend me your'n, Tucker!"
"You are a-going to misplace your eyes some day, Sister Amandy. Then
you'll be a-wanting mine, and I'll have to cut 'em out and give 'em to
you, I suppose," said Uncle Tucker as he handed over his huge,
steel-rimmed glasses.
"The Bible says 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' Tucker,
but not in a borrowing sense of the word, as I remember," remarked
Miss Lavinia in a meditative tone of voice. "And that would be the
thing about my getting the new teeth. Don't either of you need 'em,
and it would be selfish of me to spend on something they couldn't
anybody borrow from me. Amandy, dig a little deeper around that
shoot, I don't want no puny vine under my window!"
"I'm a-trying, Sister Viney," answered Miss Amanda propitiatingly.
"I've been a-bending over so long my knees are in a kinder tremble."
"Let me finish digging and put in the new dirt for you, Aunt Amandy,"
begged Rose Mary, who had given the armful of vine to Everett to hold
while Uncle Tucker tied the strings in the exact angle indicated by
Miss Lavinia. "I can do it in no time."
"No, child, I reckon I'd better do it myself," answered Miss Amanda as
she sat back on the grass for a moment's rest. "I have dug around and
trained this vine the last week in April for almost sixty years now.
Mr. Lovell brought it by to Ma one spring as he hauled his summer
groceries over the Ridge to Warren County. By such care it's never
died down yet, and I have made it my custom to give sprouts away to
all that would take 'em. I'm not a-doubting that there is some of
this vine a-budding out all over Harpeth Valley from Providence Nob to
the River bend."
"No, Amandy," interrupted Aunt Viney, "it wasn't sixty years ago, it
was jest fifty-seven. Mr. Lovell brought the switch of it with him the
first year Mr. Roberts rode this circuit, and he was a-holding that
big revival over to Providence Chapel. Mr. Lovell came into the fold
with that very first night's preaching, and we all were rejoiced.
Don't you remember he brought you that Maiden Blush rose-bush over
there at the same time he brought this vine to Ma? And one bloom came
out on the rose the next year jest in time to put it in his coffin
before we buried him when he was taken down with the fever on the Road
and died here with us. Fifty-six years ago come June, and him so young
to die while so full of the spirit of the Lord!"
Feebly Miss Amanda rose to her knees and went on with the digging
around the roots of the vine, but Rose Mary knelt beside her and laid
her strong, young arm around the bent and shaking little shoulders.
Uncle Tucker rested on his spade and looked away across the garden
wall, where the little yard of graves was hid in the shadow of tall
pine trees, and his big eyes grew very tender. Miss Lavinia fingered a
shoot of the vine that had fallen across her thin old knees with a
softened expression in her prophet-woman face, while something new and
sweet stirred in Everett's breast and woke in his tired eyes, as
across half a century was wafted the perfume of a shattered romance.
And then by the time the vine had been trained Miss Lavinia had
thought of a number of other spring jobs that must be attended to
along the front walk and around all the clumps of budding shrubs, so
with one desperate glance toward the barn, his deserted haven, Uncle
Tucker fell to with his spade, while Everett obtained a fork from the
tool house and put himself under command. Rose Mary was sharply
recalled and sent into the house to complete the arrangements for the
festivities, when she had followed the forker down by the lilac hedge,
rake in hand, with evident intention of being of great assistance in
the gardening of the amateur.
"Pull the dirt up closter around those bleeding-hearts, Tucker,"
commanded Miss Lavinia from her rocker. "They are Rose Mary's I
planted the identical day she was born, and I don't want anything to
happen to 'em in the way of cutworms or such this summer."
"Well, I don't know," answered Uncle Tucker with a little chuckle in
Everett's direction, who was turning over the dirt near a rose-bush in
his close vicinity, "it don't do to pay too much attention to women's
bleeding-hearts; let alone, they'll tie 'em up in their own courage
and go on dusting around the place, while if you notice 'em too much
they take to squeezing out more bleed drops for your sympathy. Now, I
think it's best--"
"Mister Tucker, say, Mister Tucker," came in a giggle from over the
front gate as Jennie Rucker's little freckled nose appeared just above
the top plank, only slightly in advance of that of small Peggy's.
"Mis' Poteet's got a new baby, just earned, and she says she is sorry
she can't come to Mis' Viney's party; but she can't."
"Now, fly-away, ain't that too bad!" exclaimed Uncle Tucker. "That
baby oughter be sent back until it has got manners to wait until it's
wanted. Didn't neither one of you all get here on anybody's birthday
but your own." Uncle Tucker's sally was greeted by a duet of giggles,
and the announcement committee hurried on across the street with its
news.
"Tucker, you Tucker, don't you touch that snowball bush with the
spade!" came in a fresh and alarmed command from the rocker post of
observation. "You know Ma didn't ever let that bush be touched after
it had budded. You spaded around it onct when you was young and upty
and you remember it didn't bloom."
"Muster been a hundred years ago if I was ever upty about this here
flower job," he answered in an undertone to Everett as he turned his
attention to the rose-bushes at which his apprentice had been pegging
away. "At weddings and bornings and flower tending man is just a worm
under woman's feet and he might as well not even hope to turn. All he
can do is to--"
But it was just at this juncture when Uncle Tucker's patience was
about to be exhausted, that a summons from Rose Mary came for a
general getting ready for the birthday celebration.
And in a very few hours the festivities were in full swing. Miss
Lavinia sat in state in her rocker and received the offerings and
congratulations of Sweetbriar as they were presented in various
original and characteristic forms. Young Peter Rucker, still a bit
unsteady on his pink and chubby underpinning, was steered forward to
present his glossy buckeye, hung on a plaited horse-hair string that
had been constructed by small Jennie with long and infinite patience.
Miss Lavinia's commendations threw both donor and constructor into an
agony of bashfulness from which Pete took refuge in Rose Mary's skirts
and Jennie behind her mother's chair. But at this juncture the arrival
on the scene of action of young Bob Nickols with a whole two-horse
wagon-load of pine cones, which the old lady doted on for the freshing
up of the tiny fires always kept smoldering in her andironed fireplace
the summer through, distracted the attention of the company and was
greeted with great applause. Bob had been from early morning over on
Providence Nob collecting the treasures, and, seated beside him on the
front of the wagon, was Louisa Helen Plunkett, blushing furiously and
most obviously avoiding her mother's stern eye of inquiry as to where
she had spent the valuable morning hours.
The sensation of young Bob's offering was only offset at the unpacking
of the complacent Mr. Crabtree's gift, which he bore over from the
store in his own arms. With dramatic effect he placed it on the floor
at Miss Lavinia's feet and called for a hatchet for its opening. And
as from their wrappings of paper and excelsior he drew two large gilt
and glass bottles, one containing bay rum and the other camphor, that
precious lotion for fast stiffening joints, little Miss Amanda heaved
a sigh of positive rapture. Mr. Crabtree was small and wiry, with a
hickory-nut countenance and a luscious peach of a heart, and, though
of bachelor condition, he at all times displayed sympathetic and
intuitive domestic inclinations. He kept the Sweetbriar store and was
thus in position to know of the small economies practised by the two
old ladies in the matter of personal necessities. For the months past
they had not bought the quantity of lubricating remedies that he
considered sufficient and this had been his tactful way of supplying
enough to last for some time to come. And from over the pile of gifts
heaped around her, Miss Lavinia beamed upon him to such an extent that
he felt like following young Pete's example, committing the awful
impropriety of hiding his embarrassment in any petticoat handy, but
just at this juncture up the front walk came the birthday cake
navigating itself by the long legs of Mr. Caleb Rucker and attended by
a riot of Sweetbriar youth, mad with excitement over its safe landing
and the treat in prospect. In its wake followed Mrs. Rucker,
complacent and beaming over the sensation caused by this her high
triumph in the culinary line.
"Fly-away, if that's not Providence Nob gone and turned to a cake for
Sister Viney's birthday," exclaimed Uncle Tucker, as amid generous
applause the offering was landed on a table set near the rocker.
And again at this auspicious moment a huge waiter covered with little
mountains of white ice-cream made its appearance through the front
door, impelled by the motive power of Mr. Mark Everett's elegantly
white-flannel-trousered legs, and guided to a landing beside the cake
by Rose Mary, who was a pink flower of smiles and blushes.
Then it followed that in less time than one would think possible the
company at large was busy with a spoon attached to the refreshments
which to Sweetbriar represented the height of elegance. Out in the
world beyond Old Harpeth ice-cream and cake may have lost caste as a
fashionable afternoon refreshment, having been succeeded by the
imported custom of tea and scones or an elaborate menu of reception
indigestibles, but in the Valley nothing had ever threatened the
supremacy of the frozen cream and white-frosted confection. The men
all sat on the end of the long porch and accepted second saucers and
slices and even when urged by Rose Mary, beaming with hospitality,
third relays, while the Swarm in camp on the front steps, under the
General's management, seconded by Everett, succeeded in obtaining
supplies in a practically unlimited quantity.
"Looks like Miss Rose Mary's freezer ain't got no bottom at all," said
Mr. Rucker in his long drawl as he began on a fourth white mound. "It
reminds me of 'the snow, the snow what falls from Heaven to earth
below,' and keeps a-falling." Mr. Rucker was a poet at heart and a
husband to Mrs. Rucker by profession, and his flights were regarded by
Sweetbriar at large with a mixture of pride and derision.
"Cal," said Mrs. Rucker sternly, "don't you eat more'n half that
saucer. I've got no mind to top off this here good time with mustard
plasters all around. Even rejoicings can get overfed and peter out
into ginger tea. Jennie, you and Sammie and Pete stop eating right
now. Lands alive, the sun has set and we all know Miss Viney oughter
be in the house. Shoo, everybody go home to save your manners!" And
with hearty laughs and further good-by congratulations the happy
little company of farmer folk scattered to their own roof trees across
and along Providence Road. The twilight had come, but a very young
moon was casting soft shadows from the trees rustling in the night
breezes and the stars were lighting up in competition to the rays that
shot out from window after window in the little village.
Uncle Tucker had hurried away to his belated barn duties and little
Miss Amanda into the house to stir up Miss Lavinia's fire in
preparation for their retirement, which was a ceremony of long
duration and begun with the mounting of the chickens to their roosts.
Miss Lavinia sat with her hands folded in her lap over a collection of
the smaller gifts of the afternoon and her eyes looked far away cross
the Ridge, dim in the failing light, while her stern old face took on
softened and very lovely lines. Rose Mary stood near to help her into
the house and Everett leaned against a post close on the other side of
the rocker.
"Children," she said with a little break in her usual austere voice,
"I'm kinder ashamed of accusing the Lord of forgetting me this morning
when I look at all these remembers of me here that my neighbors have
given me. I found friends when I came here eighty-two years ago to-day
and as they have died off He has raised up a new crop outen their seed
for me. This rheumatism buckeye here is the present of the great
grandson of my first beau, and this afternoon I have looked into the
kind eyes of some of my friends dead and gone many a day, and have
seen smiles come to life that have been buried fifty years. I'm
a-feeling thankful to be here another summer to see my friends and
flowers a-blooming onct more, and come next April I am a-going to
want just such another infair as this one. Now help me into bed! Young
man, you can lift me up some, I'm stiff with so long setting, and I'm
a-going to want a power of rubbing this night, Rose Mary."
So, thus held by her duties of ministration, it was quite an hour
later that Rose Mary came out of the house, which was dark and
sleep-quiet, and found Everett still sitting on the front steps
smoking and--waiting.
"Tired?" he asked as she sank down on to the step beside him and
leaned her dark head back against one of the posts that supported the
mass of honeysuckle vine.
"Not much--and a heap happy," she answered, looking up at him with
reflected stars in her long-lashed blue eyes. "Wasn't it a lovely
party?"
"Yes," answered Everett slowly as he watched the smoke curl up from
his cigar and blow in the soft little night wind across toward Rose
Mary; "yes, it was a nice party. I seriously doubt if anywhere on any
of the known continents there could have been one just like it pulled
off by any people of any nation. It was unique--in sentiment and
execution; I'm duly grateful for having been a guest--even part
honoree."
"I always think of old people as being the soft shadows that sturdy
little children cast on the wall. They are a part of the day and
sunshine, but just protected by the young folks that come between them
and the direct rays. They are strangely like flowers, too, with their
quaint fragrance. Aunt Viney is my tall purple flag, but Aunt Amandy
is my bed of white cinnamon pinks. I--I want to keep them in bloom for
always. I can't let myself think--that I can't." Rose Mary's voice
trembled into a laugh as she caught a trailing wisp of honeysuckle and
pressed a bunch of its buds to her lips.
"You'll keep them, Rose Mary. You could keep anything you--you really
wanted," said Everett in a guardedly comforting voice. "And what are
Mr. Alloway and Stonie in your flower garden?" he asked in a bantering
tone.
"Oh, Uncle Tucker is the briar rose hedge all around the place, and
Stonie is all the young shoots that I'm trying to prune and train up
just like him," answered Rose Mary with a quick laugh. "You're my
new-fashioned crimson-rambler from out over the Ridge that I'm trying
to make grow in my garden," she added, with a little hint of both
audacity and tenderness in her voice.
"I'm rooted all right," answered Everett quickly, as he blew a puff of
smoke at her. "And you, Rose Mary, are the bloom of every rose-bush
that I ever saw anywhere. You are, I verily believe, the only and
original Rose of the World."
"Oh, no," answered Rose Mary lifting her long lashes for a second's
glance at him; "I'm just the Rose of these Briars. Don't you know all
over the world women are blooming on lovely tall stems, where they
have planted themselves deep in home places and are drinking the
Master's love and courage from both sun and rain. But if we don't go
to rest some you'll wilt, Rambler, and I'll shatter. Be sure and take
the glass of cream I put by your bed. Good night and good dreams!"