IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND
And the next morning a threatening, scowling, tossed-cloud dawn
brought the day over the head of Old Harpeth down upon little
Sweetbriar, which awakened with one accord to a sense of melancholy
oppression. A cool, dust-laden wind blew down Providence Road, twisted
the branches of the tall maples along the way, tore roughly at the
festoons of blooming vines over the gables of the Briars, startled the
nestled doves into a sad crooning, whipped mercilessly at the row of
tall hollyhocks along the garden fence, flaunted the long spikes of
jack-beans and carried their quaint fragrance to pour it over the bed
of sober-colored mignonette, mixing it with the pungent zinnia odor
and flinging it all over into the clover field across the briar
hedge. The jovial old sun did his very best to light up the situation,
but just as he would succeed in getting a ray down into the Valley a
great puffy cloud would cast a gray shadow of suppression over his
effort and retire him sternly for another half hour.
And on the wings of the intruding, out-of-season wind came a train of
ills. Young Tucker Poteet waked at daylight and howled dismally with a
pain that seemed to be all over and then in spots. When he went to
take down the store shutters Mr. Crabtree smashed one of his large,
generous-spreading thumbs and Mrs. Rucker's breakfast eggs burned to a
cinder state while she tied it up in camphor for him. In the night a
mosquito had taken a bite out of the end of Jennie's small nose and it
was swelled to twice its natural size, and Peter, the wise, barked a
plump shin before he was well out of the trundle bed. One of young
Bob's mules broke away and necessitated a trip half way up to
Providence for his capture, and Mrs. Plunkett had Louisa Helen so
busy at some domestic manoeuvers that she found it impossible to go
with him.
And before noon the whole village was in a fervid state of commotion.
Mrs. Rucker had insisted on moving Mr. Crabtree and all his effects
over into the domicile of his prospective bride, regardless of both
her and his abashed remonstrance.
"Them squeems are all foolishness, Lou Plunkett," she had answered a
faint plea from the widow for a delay until after the ceremony for
this material mingling of the to-be-united lives. "It's all right and
proper for you and Mr. Crabtree to be married at night meeting Sunday,
and his things won't be unmarried in your house only through Saturday
and Sunday. I'm a-going to pack up his Sunday clothes, a pair of clean
socks, a shirt and other things in this basket. Then I'll fix him up a
shake-down in my parlor to spend Saturday night in, and I'll dress him
up nice and fine for the wedding you may be sure. We ain't got but
this day to move him out and clean up the house good to move Rose Mary
and the old folks into early Saturday morning, so just come on and get
to work. You can shut your eyes to his things setting around your
house for just them one day or two, can't you?"
"They ain't nothing in this world I couldn't do to make it just the
littlest mite easier for Rose Mary and them sweet old folks, even to
gettin' my house into a unseemly married condition before hand,"
answered Mrs. Plunkett as she brushed a tear away from her blue eyes.
"That's the way we all feel," said Mrs. Rucker. "Now if I was you I'd
give Mr. Crabtree that middle bureau drawer. Men are apt to poke
things away careless if they has the top, and the bottom one is best
to use for your own things. Mr. Satterwhite always kept his clothes so
it were a pleasure to look at 'em, but Cal Rucker prefers a pair of
socks separated across the house if he can get them there. I found
one of his undershirts full of mud and stuck away in the kitchen safe
with the cup towels last week. There comes Mis' Poteet to help at
last! I never heard anything yell like Tucker has been doing all
morning. Is he quiet at last, Mis' Poteet?"
"Yes, I reckon he's gave out all the holler that's in him, but I'm
afraid to put him down," and Mrs. Poteet continued the joggling,
swaying motion to a blue bundle on her breast that she had been
administering as a continuous performance to young Tucker since
daylight. "I'm sorry I couldn't come help you all with the moving, but
you can count on my mop and broom over to the store all afternoon,
soon as I can turn him over to the children."
"We ain't needed you before, but now we have got Mr. Crabtree all
settled down here with Mrs. Plunkett we can get to work on his house
right after dinner. Have you been over to the Briars to see 'em in the
last hour?"
"Yes, I come by there, but they didn't seem to need me. Miss Viney
has got Miss Amandy and Tobe and the General at work, and Rose Mary
has gone down to the dairy to pack up the last batch of butter for Mr.
Crabtree to take to the city in the morning. Mr. Tucker's still going
over things in the barn, and my feelings riz so I had to come away for
fear of me and little Tucker both busting out crying."
And over at the Briars the scenes of exodus being enacted were well
calculated to touch a heart sterner than that of the gentle,
sympathetic and maternal Mrs. Poteet. Chilled by the out-of-season
wind Miss Lavinia had awakened with as bad a spell of rheumatism as
she had had for a year and it was with the greatest difficulty that
Rose Mary had succeeded in rubbing down the pain to a state where she
could be propped up in bed to direct little Miss Amanda and the
children in the last sad rites of getting things into shape to be
carried across the road at the beginning of the morrow, which was the
day Uncle Tucker had sternly set as that of his abdication.
Feebly, Miss Amanda tottered about trying to carry out her sister's
orders and patiently the General and Tobe labored to help her, though
their hearts were really over at the store, where the rest of the
Swarm were, in the midst of the excitement of Mr. Crabtree's change of
residence. In all their young lives of varied length they had never
before had an opportunity to witness the upheaval of a moving and this
occasion was frought with a well-nigh insupportable fascination. The
General's remaining at the post of family duty and his command of his
henchman to the same sacrifice was indeed remarkable, though in a way
pathetic.
"You, Stonewall Jackson, don't handle those chiny vases careless!"
commanded Aunt Viney in a stern voice. "Put 'em in the basket right
side up, for they were your great grandmother's wedding-present from
Mister Bradford from Arkansas."
"Yes'm," answered Stonie, duly impressed. "But I've done packed 'em in
four different baskets for you, and if this one don't do all right,
can't me and Tobe together carry 'em over the Road to-morrow careful
for you, Aunt Viney?"
"Well, yes, then you can take 'em out and set 'em back in their
places," answered Miss Lavinia, which order was carried out faithfully
by the General, with a generous disregard of the fact that he had been
laboring over them under a fire of directions for more than a
half-hour.
"Now, Amandy, come away from those flower cans and get out the grave
clothes from the bureau drawers and let the boys wrap them in that old
sheet first and then in the newspapers and then put 'em in that box
trunk with brass tacks over there!" directed Miss Lavinia as Miss
Amandy wandered over by the window, along which stood a row of tomato
cans into which were stuck slips of all the vines and plants on the
land of the Briars, ready for transportation across Providence Road
when the time came. There was something so intensely pathetic in this
effort of the fast-fading little old woman to begin to bud from the
old life flower-plants to blossom in a new one, into which she could
hardly expect to make more than the shortest journey, that even the
General's young and inexperienced heart was moved to a quick
compassion.
"I'm a-going to carry the flowers over and plant 'em careful for you,
Aunt Amandy," he said as he sidled up close to her and put his arm
around her with a protective gesture. "We'll water 'em twice a day and
just _make_ 'em grow, won't we, Tobe?"
"Bucketfuls 'til we drap," answered Tobe with a sympathy equal to and
a courage as great as that of his superior officer.
"Is the blue myrtle sprig often the graves holding up its leaves,
Amandy?" asked Miss Lavinia in a softened tone of voice.
"Yes, it's doing fine," answered Miss Amandy, bending over to the last
of the row of cans.
"Then come on and get out the burying things and let's get that job
over," Miss Lavinia continued to insist. "Don't get our things mixed!
Remember that my grave shift has got nothing but a seemly stitched
band on it while you would have linen lace on yours. And don't let
anything get wrinkled. I don't want to rise on Judgment Day looking
like I needed the pressing of a hot iron. Now pull out the trunk,
boys, lift out the tray so as I can--"
But at this juncture Rose Mary appeared at the door with a tray on
which stood a bowl of soup, and Miss Lavinia lay back on her pillows
weakly, with the fire all gone out of her eyes and exhaustion written
on every line of her determined old face.
"Go get dinner, everybody, so we can get back to work," she directed
weakly as she raised the spoon to her lips and then rested a moment
before she could take another sip. And with the last spoonful she
looked up and whispered to Rose Mary, "You'll have to do the rest
child, I can't drive any farther with a broke heart. I've got to lay
myself in the arms of prayer and go to sleep." And so rested, Rose
Mary left her.
Then finding the motive powers which had been driving her removed,
little Miss Amandy stole away to the cedar grove behind the garden
fence, the boys scampered with the greatest glee across the Road to
the scene of mop and broom action behind the store, and Uncle Tucker
stiffly mounted old Gray to drive the cows away to their separate
homes. The thrifty neighbors had been glad to buy and pay him cash for
the sleek animals, and their price had been the small capital which
had been available for Uncle Tucker to embark on the commercial seas
in partnership with Mr. Crabtree.
Thus left to herself in the old house, Rose Mary wandered from room to
room trying to put things in shape for the morrow's moving and
breasting her deep waters with what strength she could summon. Up to
this last day some strange hope had buoyed her up, and it was only at
this moment when the inevitable was so plainly closing down upon her
and her helpless old people that the bitterness of despair rose in her
heart. Against the uprooting of their feebleness her whole nature
cried out, and the sacrifice that had been offered her in the
milk-house days before, seemed but a small price to pay to avert the
tragedy. Doubt of herself and her motives assailed her, and she
quivered in every nerve when she thought that thus she had failed
them. What! Was she to save herself and let the sorrow fall on their
bent shoulders? Was it too late? Her heart answered her that it was,
for her confession of horror of her purchaser to Uncle Tucker had cut
off any hope of deceiving him and she knew he would be burned at the
stake before he would let her make the sacrifice. She was helpless,
helpless to safeguard them from this sorrow, as helpless as they
themselves!
For a long hour she stood at the end of the porch, looking across at
Providence Nob, behind whose benevolent head the storm clouds of the
day were at last sinking, lit by the glow of the fast-setting sun. The
wind had died down and a deep peace was settling over the Valley, like
a benediction from the coming night. Just for strength to go on, Rose
Mary prayed out to the dim, blue old ridge and then turned to her
ministrations to her assembling household.
Uncle Tucker was so tired that he hardly ate the supper set before
him, and before the last soft rays of the sun had entirely left the
Valley he had smoked his pipe and gone to bed.
And soon in his wake retired the General, with two of the small dogs
to bear him company in his white cot. But the settling of Miss Lavinia
for the night had been long, and had brought Rose Mary almost to the
point of exhaustion. Tired out by her afternoon over in the little
graveyard, Miss Amanda had not the strength to read the usual chapters
of retiring service that Miss Lavinia always required of her, and so
Rose Mary drew the candle close beside the bed and attempted to go on
with her rubbing and read at the same time. And though, if read she
must, the very soul of Rose Mary panted for the comfort of some of the
lines of the Sweet Singer, Aunt Viney held her strictly to the words
of her favorite thunderer, Jeremiah, and little Aunt Amandy bunched up
under the cover across the bed fairly shook with terror as she buried
her head in her pillow to keep out the rolling words of invective that
began with an awful "_Harken_" and ended with "_Woe is me now, for my
soul is wearied_!"
"Now," concluded Miss Lavinia, "you can put out the light. Rose Mary,
and if me and Amandy was to open our eyes on the other side of the
river it would be but a good thing for us. Lay the Bible in that
newspaper on top of that pile of _Christian Advocates_, with a string
to tie 'em all up after morning lesson, to be carried away. The Lord
bless and keep you, child, and don't forget to latch the front door on
us all for the last time!"
Softly Rose Mary drew the door partly closed and left them in the
quiet of the fast-deepening purple dusk. She peeped into Uncle
Tucker's room and assured herself by his sonorous breathing that rest
at last was comforting him, and for a moment in her own room she bent
over the little cot where the General and his two spotted servitors
lay curled up in a tangle and fast in the depths of sleep. Then she
opened wide the old hall door that had for more than a century swung
over the sill marked off by the length of the intrepid English
foremother who had tramped the wilderness trail to possess what she,
herself, was giving up.
And as she stood desperate, at bay, with her nest storm tossed and
threatened, suddenly the impossibility of it all came down upon her,
and stern with a very rigidity of resolve she went into the house,
lighted a candle by the old desk in the hall, and wrote swiftly a few
words of desperate summons to the Senator. She knew that Friday night
always found him over the fields at Boliver, and she told him briefly
the situation and asked him to come over in the early morning to the
rescue--and sacrifice.
When she had first come out on the porch she had seen young Bob ride
up to the store on one of his colts, and she ran fleetly down to the
front gate and called to him. He consented instantly to ride over and
deliver the note for her, but he shot an uneasy glance at her from
beneath his wide hat as he put the letter in his pocket.
"Is anything wrong, Miss Rose Mary?" he asked anxiously but
respectfully.
"No, Bob, dear, nothing that--that I can't make--right," she answered
in a soft, tearless voice, and as he got on his horse and rode away
she came slowly up the long front walk that was moonflecked from the
leaves of the tall trees. Then once more she stood on the old door
sill--at bay.
And as she looked at the old Ridge across the sweet, blooming
clover-fields, with the darkened house behind her, again the waters of
despair rose breast-high and heart-high, beat against her aching
throat and were just about to dash over her head as she stretched out
one arm to the hills and with a broken cry bent her white forehead in
the curve of the other, but suddenly bent head, tear-blinded eyes,
quivering breast and supplicating arms were folded tight in a strong
embrace and warm, thirsty lips pressed against the tears on her
cheeks as Everett's voice with a choke and a gulp made its way into
her consciousness.
"I feel like shaking the very life out of you, Rose Mary Alloway," was
his tender form of greeting.
"You're squeezing it out," came in all the voice that Rose Mary could
command for an answer. And the broad-shouldered, burden-bearing,
independent woman that was the Rose of Old Harpeth melted into just a
tender girl who crushed her heart against her lover's and clung as
meekly as any slip of vine to her young lord oak. "But I don't care,"
she finished up under his chin. And Everett's laugh that greeted and
accepted her unexpected meekness rang through the hall and brought a
commotion in answer.
The wee dogs, keen both of ear and scent, shot like small electric
volts from Stonie's couch, hurled themselves through the hall and
sprang almost waist-high against Everett's side in a perfect ecstasy
of welcome. They yelped and barked and whined and nosed in a tumbling
heap of palpitating joy until he was obliged to hold Rose Mary in one
arm while he made an attempt to respond to and abate their enthusiasm
with the other.
"Now, now, that's all right! Nice dogs, nice dogs!" he was answering
and persuading, when a stern call from the depths of Miss Lavinia's
room, the door of which Rose Mary had left ajar, abstracted her from
Everett's arm on the instant and sent her hurrying to answer the
summons.
"Is that young man come back? and light the candle," Miss Lavinia
demanded and commanded in the same breath. And just as Rose Mary
flared up the dim light on the table by the bed Everett himself stood
in the doorway. With one glance his keen eyes took in the situation in
the dim room in which the two old wayfarers lay prepared for the
morning journey, and what Miss Lavinia's stately and proper greeting
would have been to him none of them ever knew, for with a couple of
strides he was over by the bed at Rose Mary's side and had taken the
stern old lady into his strong arms and landed a kiss on the ruffle of
white nightcap just over her left ear.
"No leaving the Briars this season, Miss Lavinia," he said in a
laughing, choking voice as he bent across and extracted one of little
Miss Amandy's hands from the tight bunch she had curled herself into
under the edge of her pillow and bestowed a squeeze thereon. "It's all
fixed up over at Boliver this afternoon. There's worse than oil on the
place--and it's all yours now for keeps." With Rose Mary in his arms
Everett had entirely forgotten to announce to her such a minor fact as
the saving of her lands and estate, but to the two little old ladies
his sympathy had made him give the words of reprieve with his first
free breath. The bundles on the floor and the old trunk had smote his
heart with a fierce pain that the impulsive warmth of his greeting
and the telling of his rescue could only partly ease.
"The news only reached me day before--" he was going on to explain
when, candle in hand, Uncle Tucker appeared in the doorway. His
long-tailed night-shirt flapped around his bare, thin old legs, and
every separate gray lock stood by itself and rampant, while his eyes
seemed deeper and more mystic than ever.
"Well, what's all this ruckus?" he demanded as he peered at them
across the light of his candle. "Have any kind of cyclone blowed you
from New York clean across here to Harpeth Valley, boy?"
"He has come back with the mercy of our Lord in his hands to save our
home; and you go put on your pants before your pipes get chilled,
Tucker Alloway," answered Aunt Viney in her most militant tone of
voice. "And, Rose Mary, you can take that young man on out of here now
so Amandy can take that shame-faced head of hers out of that feather
pillow. It's all on account of that tored place in her night-cap I
told her to mend. You needn't neither of you come back no more,
because we must get to sleep, so as to be ready to unpack before
sun-up and get settled back for the day. And don't you go to bed,
neither one of you, without reading Jeremiah twelfth, first to last
verse, and me and Amandy will do the same." With which Everett found
himself dismissed with a seeming curtness which he could plainly see
was an heroic control of emotion in the feeble old stoic who was
trembling with exhaustion.
Uncle Tucker, called to account for the lack of warmth and also
propriety in his attire, had hastened back to his own apartment and
Everett found him sitting up in his bed, lighting the old cob with
trembling fingers but with his excitement well under control. He
listened intently to Everett's hurried but succinct account of the
situation and crisis in his own and the Alloway business affairs, as
he puffed away, and his old eyes lighted with excitement at the rush
of the tale of high finance.
And when at last Everett paused for lack of breath, after his dramatic
climax, the old philosopher lay back on his high-piled feather pillows
and blinked out into the candle-light, puffed in silence for a few
minutes, then made answer in his own quizzical way with a radiant
smile from out under his beetling white brows:
"Well," he said between puffs, "looks like fortune is, after all, a
curious bird without even tail feathers to steer by nor for a man to
ketch by putting salt on. Gid failed both with a knife in the back and
a salt shaker to ketch it, but you were depending on nothing but a
ringdove coo, as far as I can see, when it hopped in your hand. I
reckon you'll get your answer."
"Are you willing--to have me ask for it, Mr. Alloway?" asked Everett
with a radiant though slightly embarrassed smile.
"Yes," answered Uncle Tucker as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe
against the table and looked straight into Everett's eyes. "After a
man has plowed a honest, straight-furrowed field in life it's no
more'n fair for Providence to send a-loving, trusting woman to meet
him at the bars. Good night, and don't forget to latch the front door
when you have finally torn yourself away from that moonlight!"
And the call of the young moon that came with the warm garden-scented
gusts of winds that were sweeping across Harpeth Valley was a riot in
Everett's veins as he made his way through the silent hall toward the
moonlit porch on the top step of which he could see Rose Mary sitting
in the soft light, but a lusty young snore from a dark room on the
left made him remember that there was one greeting he had missed. He
bent over the General's little cot, across which lay a long shaft of
the white light from the hilltops, and was about to press his lips on
the warm, breath-stirred ones of the small boy, but he restrained
himself in time from offering to the General in his defenseless sleep
what would have been an insult to him awake, and contented himself
with a most cautious and manly clasp of the chubby little hand.
"Ketch it, Tobe, ketch it--don't let Aunt Viney's vase be broked,"
murmured Stonie as he turned on his side and buried his head still
deeper in the pillow.
"No, General, Aunt Viney's vase--is--not going to be broken, thank
God," answered Everett under his breath as he turned away and left the
General, who, even in sleep, carried his responsibilities sturdily.
"Rose Mary," he said a little later as he stood on the bottom step
below her, so that his eyes were just on a level with hers as she sat
and smiled down upon him, "for a woman, you have very little
curiosity. Don't you want to ask me where I've been, why I went and
what I've been doing every minute since I left you? Can it be
indifference that makes you thus ignore your feminine prerogative of
the inquisition?"
"I'm beginning at being glad you are here. Joy's just the white foam
at the top of the cup, and it ought not to be blown away, no
matter--how thirsty one is, ought it? Now tell me what brought you
back--to save me," and Rose Mary held out her hand, with one of her
lovely, entreating gestures, while her eyes were full of tender tears.
And it was with difficulty that Everett held himself to a condition to
tell her what he wanted her to know without any further delay.
"Well," he answered as he raised his lips from a joy draft at the cup
of her pink palms, "the immediate cause was a telegram that came
Tuesday night. It said '_Gid sells out Mr. Tucker and wants your
girl_,' and it was signed '_Bob_.' All these weeks a bunch of hard old
goldbugs had been sitting in conclave, weighing my evidence and
reports and making one inadequate syndicating offer after another.
They were teetering here and balancing there, but at eleven o'clock
Wednesday morning the cyclone that blew me down here across Old
Harpeth originated in the directors' rooms of the firm, and I guess
the old genties are gasping yet.
"I had that telegram in my pocket, tickets for the three-o'clock
Southern express folded beside 'em, and I put enough daylight into my
proposition to dazzle the whole conclave into setting signatures to
papers they'd been moling over for weeks. I don't know what did it,
but they signed up and certified checks in one large hurry.
"Then I beat it and never drew breath until I made the Farmers' and
Traders' Bank in Boliver this afternoon, covered those notes of Mr.
Alloways, killed that mortgage and hit Providence Road for Sweetbriar.
I met Bob out about a mile from town, and he put me next to the whole
situation and gave _me_ your note. I don't know which I came nearest
to, swearing or crying, but the Plunkett-Crabtree news made me raise
a shout instead of either. But if I did what I truly ought, Rose Mary
Alloway, I _would_ shake the life out of you for not writing me about
it all. I may do it yet."
"Please don't!" answered Rose Mary with a little smile that still held
its hint of the suffering she had gone through. "I thought you were
out of work yourself and couldn't help us, and I didn't want to
trouble you. It would have hurt you so to know if you couldn't help
me, and I didn't--"
"God, that's it! Fool that I was to go away and risk leaving you
without an understanding!" exclaimed Everett in a bitterly reproachful
tone of voice. "But I was afraid to let you know what I had discovered
until I could get the money to settle that mortgage. I was afraid that
you or Mr. Alloway would unconsciously let him get a hint of the find,
and I knew he could and would foreclose any minute. He was suspicious
of me and my prospecting, anyway, and as he was an old, and as you
both thought, tested friend, what way did I have of proving him the
slob I knew him to be? I thought it best to go and get the company
formed, the option money paid to cover the mortgage and all of it out
of his hands before he could have any chance to get into the game at
all. And that was really the best way to manage it--only I hadn't
counted on his swooping down on--you. Again, God, what I risked!"
"Yes," answered Rose Mary in a voice that barely controlled the cold
horror of the thought that rose between them, "it almost happened. I
thought I ought to--to save them, even if Uncle Tucker wouldn't
let me, and I gave Bob that note--to--to him. It almost
happened--to-morrow. Quick, hold me close--don't let me think about
it--ever!" and Rose Mary shuddered in the crush of Everett's arms.
[Illustration: "You won't ever leave me any more?"]
"Out in the world, Rose Mary," said Everett as he lifted his lips
from hers, "it would have happened--the tragedy, and you would have
been the loot; but down here in Harpeth Valley they grow men like your
Uncle Tucker, and they turn, by a strange motive power, wheels that do
not crush, but--lift. I left you in danger because I had schemed it
out in my world's way, fool, fool that I--"
"Please, please don't say things about yourself like that to me,"
pleaded Rose Mary, quickly raising her head and smiling through her
tears at him. "Go on and tell me what you did find out there in the
pasture; don't blow off any more of my foam!"
"Cobalt, if you care to know," answered Everett with an excited laugh,
"the richest deposit in the States I found out--beats a gold mine all
hollow. I came on it almost accidentally while testing for the allied
metals up the creek. Your money will grow in bunches now, for the
biggest and the best mining syndicate in New York has taken it up.
You can just shake down the dollars and do what you please from now
on."
"You'll have to do that sort of orchard work, I'll be busy in the
house," answered Rose Mary, with a rapturous, breathless shyness, and
she held out her hand to him with the most lovely of all her little
gestures of entreaty. "You promised once to farm for me and--you won't
ever leave--_ever_ leave me any more, will you?"
"No, never," answered Everett as he took both her hands and at arms'
length pressed them against his breast, "I'm not going to enact over
again the rôle of poor chap obliged to be persuaded into matrimony by
heiress, but I'm going to take my own and buckle down and see that you
people get every cent of that dig-up that's coming to you. With the
reputation this find gives me I'll be able to jolly well grubstake
with commissions from now on, but I'll hit no trail after this with a
mule-pack that can't carry double, Mary of the Rose."
"And that doesn't always lead back in just a little time to--to the
nesties?" she asked with the dove stars deep in the pools of her eyes,
while ever so slightly her hands drew him toward her.
"Always a blazed, short cut when they need--us," he answered,
yielding, then paused a moment and held himself from her and said,
looking deep into the eyes raised to his, "Truly, rose woman, am I
that beggar-man who came over the Ridge, cold, and in the tatters of
his disillusion? Do you suppose Old Harpeth has given me this warm
garment of ideals that wraps me now for keeps?"
"Of course, he has, for it's made for you of your--Father's love. And
isn't it--rose-colored?"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Rose of Old Harpeth, by Maria Thompson Daviess