departed, and not at all abashed the humble small women trailing respectfully behind them.
"That women folks are the touch-off to the whole explosion of life is a hard lesson to learn for some men, and Stonie Jackson is one of that kind," observed Uncle Tucker as he looked with a quizzical expression after the small procession. "Want me to read that letter and tell you what's in it?" he further remarked, shifting both expression and attention on to Rose Mary, who stood at his side.
"No, I'll read it myself and tell you what's in it," answered Rose Mary with a blush and a smile. "I haven't written him about our troubles, because—because he hasn't got a position yet and I don't want to trouble him while he is lonely and discouraged."
"Well, I reckon that's right," answered Uncle Tucker still in a bantering frame of mind that it delighted Rose Mary to see him maintain under the situation. "Come trouble, some women like to blind a man with cotton
wool while they wade through the high water and only holler for help when their petticoats are down around their ankles on the far bank. We'll wait and send Everett a photagraf of me and you dishing out molasses and lard as grocer clerks. And glad to do it, too!" he added with a sudden fervor of thankfulness rising in his voice and great gray eyes.
"Yes, Uncle Tucker, glad and proud to do it," answered Rose Mary quickly. "Oh, don't you know that if you hadn't seen and understood because you loved me so, I would have felt it was right to do—to do what was so horrible to me? I will—I will make up to you and them for keeping me from—it. What do you suppose Mr. Newsome will do when he finds out that you have moved and are ready to turn the place over to him, even without any foreclosure?"
"Well, speculating on what men are a-going to do in this life is about like trying to read turkey tracks in the mud by the spring-house,
and I'm not wasting any time on Gid Newsome's splay-footed impressions. Come to-morrow night I'm a-going to pull the front door to for the last time on all of us and early next morning Tom Crabtree's a-going to take the letter and deed down to Gid in his office in the city for me. Don't nobody have to foreclose on me; I hand back my debt dollar for dollar outen my own pocket without no duns. To give up the land immediate are just simple justice to him, and I'm a-leaving the Lord to deal with him for trying to buy a woman in her time of trouble. We haven't told it on him and we are never a-going to. I wisht I could make the neighbors all see the jestice in his taking over the land and not feel so spited at him. I'm afraid it will lose him every vote along Providence Road. 'Tain't right!"
"I know it isn't," answered Rose Mary. "But when Mrs. Rucker speaks her mind about him and Bob chokes and swells up my heart gets warm. Do you suppose it's wrong to
let a friend's trouble heat sympathy to the boiling point? But if you don't need me I'm going down to the milk-house to work out my last batch of butter before they come to drive away my cows." And Rose Mary hurried down the lilac path before Uncle Tucker could catch a glimpse of the tears that rose at the idea of having to give up the beloved Mrs. Butter and her tribe of gentle-eyed daughters.