"No, we're jest giving all the household duds a mooning instead of a sunning, Cal," answered Uncle Tucker with a chuckle as he came over to the wall beside the visitor. "What's the word along the Road?"
"Gid Newsome have sent the news as he'll be here Sad'ay night to lay off and plow up
this here dram or no-dram question for Sweetbriar voters, so as to tote our will up to the state house for us next election. As a state senator, we can depend on Gid to expend some and have notice taken of this district, if for nothing but his corn-silk voice and white weskit. It must take no less'n a pound of taller a week to keep them shoes and top hat of his'n so slick. I should jedge his courting to be kinder like soft soap and molasses, Miss Rose Mary." And Mr. Rucker's smile was of the saddest as he handed this bit of gentle banter over the wall to Rose Mary, who had come over to stand beside Uncle Tucker in the end of the long path.
"It's wonderful how devoted Mr. Newsome is to all his friends," answered Rose Mary with a blush. "He sent me three copies of the Bolivar Herald with the poem of yours he had them print last week, and I was just going over to take you and Mrs. Rucker one as soon as I got the time to—"
"
Johnnie-jump-ups, Miss Rose Mary, don't you never do nothing like that to me!" exclaimed Mr. Rucker with a very fire of desperation lighting his thin face. "If Mis' Rucker was to see one verse of that there poetry I would have to plow the whole creek-bottom corn-field jest to pacify her. I've done almost persuaded her to hire Bob Nickols to do it with his two teams and young Bob, on account of a sciattica in my left side that plowing don't do no kind of good to. I have took at least two bottles of her sasparilla and sorgum water and have let Granny put a plaster as big and loud-smelling as a mill swamp on my back jest to git that matter of the corn-field fixed up, and here you most go and stir up the ruckus again with that poor little Trees in the Breeze poem that Gid took and had printed unbeknownst to me. Please, mam, burn them papers!"
"Oh, I wouldn't tell her for the world if you don't want me to, Mr. Rucker!" exclaimed
Rose Mary in distress. "But I am sure she would be proud of—"
"No, it looks like women don't take to poetry for a husband; they prefers the hefting of a hoe and plow handles. It's hard on Mis' Rucker that I ain't got no constitution to work with, and I feel it right to keep all my soul-squirmings and sech outen her sight. The other night as I was a-putting Petie to bed, while she and Bob was at the front gate a-trying to trade on that there plowing, a mighty sweet little verse come to me about
"'The little shoes in mother's hand
Nothing like 'em in the land,'