The Road to Providence

by Maria Thompson Daviess

"Of course he's hungry, bless his little heart," answered Mother as she removed the fez and ruffled up the damp curls. "Run fetch the tea-cake bucket from the kitchen safe, 'Liza, and won't you come sit down, Deacon?"

"No, thank you, Sister," answered the Deacon with a glance of real regret at the comfortable rocker Miss Wingate had hastened to draw forward into a sunny but sheltered corner of the porch, "I'm on my way to take tea with Sister Pratt. I'm to meet Mrs. Bostick there. How's the throat, child?" And his smile up at the singer lady was one of the most sympathetic interest.

"Better, thank you, I think," said Miss Wingate, answering both question and smile. "How well you are looking to-day, Deacon!"

"Why, I'm made over new by that boy of a Doctor," said the Deacon, fairly beaming with enthusiasm. "Your cure will be only a matter of time, a matter of time, my dear—Squire Tutt to the contrary," he added with a chuckle.

"There, bless my heart, if my ears ain't heard two testimonies to Tom Mayberry all in one minute!" exclaimed Mother with a delighted laugh. "Have a cake, won't you, Deacon?" she asked, offering the bucket.

She then established Eliza and the small stranger on the edge of the steps, with an admonition as to the disposal of the crumbs over on to the grass, and filled both pairs of hands with the crisp discs. Eliza spread the end of her short blue calico skirt over Martin Luther's chubby knees, and they both proceeded to eat into the improvised napkin with the utmost comradeship. Miss Wingate had strolled down to the gate with the Deacon and had paused on the way to decorate the buttonhole of his shiny old coat with a bit of the white lilac nodding over the wall.

"'Liza, child," said Mother as she glanced at Martin Luther with a contemplative eye, "when you're done eating run over and ask your Maw to send me a pair of Billy's britches and a shirt. No, maybe young Ez's 'll be better, and bring 'em and Martin Luther on back to the kitchen to me." With which she disappeared into the house, leaving the munchers to finish their feast alone.

And in an incredibly short time the last crumb, even those rescued from the skirt, had disappeared and Eliza had led Martin Luther down the walk, across the Road and around the corner of the Pike cottage, while the Deacon still lingered talking to Miss Wingate at the gate. Eliza had taken upon herself, with her usual generalship, the development of Mother Mayberry's plan for the arraying of the young stranger in what Providence would consider a civilized garb.

And for some minutes Miss Wingate stood leaning over the top rail of the low gate idly watching a group of Pratts, Turners, Mosbeys, Hoovers and Pikes playing a mysterious game, which necessitated wild dashes across a line drawn down the middle of the Road in the white dust, shrill cries of capture and frequent change of base. The day had been a long sunshiny one, full of absorbing interests, and as she stood drinking in the perfume from a spray of lilac she had broken to choose the bit for the Deacon, she suddenly realized that not one minute had she found in which to let the horrible dread creep close and clutch at her throat. Helping along in the construction of a bucket of tea-cakes, the printing of four cakes of butter, the simmering of a large pan of horehound syrup and the excitement of pouring it into the family bottles that Mother was filling against a sudden night call from some crouper down or across the Road, to say nothing of a most exciting pie, that had been concocted entirely by herself from a jar of peaches and frilled around with the utmost regard for its artistic appearance, to which could be added the triumph of the long-tailed pink gown for the daughter of young Eliza, had kept her busy and—with a quick smile she had to admit to herself, happy. Indeed the remembrance of the rapid disappearance of the pie and Doctor Mayberry's blush when, after he had eaten two-thirds of it, his mother had informed him of the authorship, brought a positive glow of pleasure to her cheeks. Such a serious, gentle, skilful young Doctor as he was—and "a perfect dear" she went as far as admitting to herself, this time with a low laugh.

And as if her pondering on his virtues had had power to bring a materialization, suddenly Doctor Tom stood in front of her on the other side of the gate. He had come from up the Road while she had been looking down in the other direction, and in his hand he held a spray of purple lilacs which he had broken from a large bush that hung over the fence from the Pratt yard into the Road and also spread itself a yard or two into Hoover territory.