Clover and Blue Grass

by Eliza Calvert Hall

"I don't know as we'd be called a poor family," said Sally McElrath, "but if you've got more than you know what to do with, just hand it over to me. It'll save me from cookin' supper to-night."

"Yes, Aunt Tabby," said Dan, "don't be afraid to offer us some of the leavin's. Jest cut me a slab o' that jelly-cake and one or two slices o' your good bread. I ain't forgot the supper I had last May Meetin' Sunday. Sally had a sick headache and couldn't cook a thing, and all I could find in the basket was a pickle and a hard boiled egg."

There was a general laugh, in which Sally joined heartily. Aunt Tabby made generous contributions from her basket to Sally's, Dan watching the operation with hungry eyes, and then she looked around for a convenient tree trunk against which she might rest her ample back and bear a part in the general conversation.

In rural communities the church is the great social center. After the period of worship, though the hours are God's own, it is not deemed a profanation of the day to spend a little time in friendly intercourse, and only the unregenerate youth of the congregation consider it a hardship to listen to a second sermon in the afternoon.

"Now look yonder, will you?" exclaimed an elderly matron; "them young folks are fixin' to go off ridin' instead of stayin' to second service. You, Percival! You, Matty! Don't you stir a step from here, Preachin's goin' to begin again before you can get back."

Matty's right foot was on the step. Her right hand grasped the top of the buggy, and her left was firmly held by a handsome youth whose energies were divided between helping her into his "rig" and managing his horse.

"You, Matty!" The second warning came in strong tones and with a threatening accent.

Matty turned with a bird-like motion of the head. She darted a glance and a smile over her shoulder; the glance was for her mother, the smile for the young man. The latter had failed twice in Greek and Latin, but he understood the language of the eye and lip, and the delicate pressure of the girl's fingers on his. He, too, threw a glance and a smile backward, and the next instant the two were spinning down the road in the direction of the Iron Bridge.

There was a burst of good-natured laughter from the fathers. They remembered the days of their youth and rather wished themselves in the young man's place. "Pretty well done," chuckled Uncle Mose Bascom. "I've always said that when it comes to holdin' a spirited horse and at the same time helpin' a pretty girl into a buggy, a man ought to have four hands, but Percival did the thing mighty well with jest two."

The young girls who lacked Matty's daring looked down the road with envy in their eyes. How much better that ride in the wooded road to the bridge than another dull sermon in that hot church! But the mothers of the virtuous damsels smiled complacently, thanking God that their daughters were not as other women's, and Ma Harris "walled" her eyes and sighed piously.