The Doctor ignored this feint and went on with the most exquisite gentleness in his lovely voice that somehow brought her heart into her throat, and without knowing it she edged an inch or two closer to him and her hand made an involuntary movement toward his that rested on the step near her, but which she managed to stop in time. "You realize, do you not, dear lady, that your friendliness to—to us all, commands my intensest loyalty? You'll just promise to remember always that I do understand and go on being happy with us, won't you—us country folks of Providence Road?" The note of pride in his voice was struck with no uncertain sound.
"Oh, but it's you that don't—don't—" the singer lady was about to commit herself most dreadfully by her exclamation in the low dove notes that alone had no trace of the disastrous burr, when Mother Mayberry stepped out of the hall door and came and seated herself beside them.
"Well, of course, I know the Bible do say that they won't be no marriage or giving in marriage in the hereafter, but I do declare we all might miss such infairs as these, even in Heaven," she observed jovially. "Didn't everybody look nice and act nice? Course it was just country doings to you, honey-bird, but I know you enjoyed it some even if it were." Like all sympathetic natures Mother Mayberry fell with ease into the current of any thought, and the young Doctor reached out and took her hand into his with quick appreciation of the fact.
"It was so very lovely that it made me—made me want—" the daring with which the singer lady had begun her defiant remark gave out in the middle and she had to let it trail weakly.
"Well, I hope it made Mr. Petway want Prissy bad enough to ask her, along about moon-up," said Mother Mayberry in a practical tone of voice. "Seems like I hear they voices; and if he IS over there I don't see how he can get out of co'ting some. It's just in the air to-night—and WE'D better all be a-going to bed so as to get up early to start off. Tom Mayberry, seems to me as I remember it, you looked much less plain favored to-day than common. Did you have on some new clothes? And ain't you a-going to pass a compliment on Elinory and me, both with new frocks wored to please you?"
The Doctor laughed and as they all rose together he still held his mother's hand in his and instead of an answer he bent and kissed it with a most distinctly foreign-acquired grace.
"That's honey-fuzzle again, Tom Mayberry, if not in words, in acts," she exclaimed with a delighted laugh. "But pass it along to Elinory if only to keep her from feeling lonesome. Let him kiss your hand, child, he ain't nothing but a country bumpkin that can't talk complimentary to save his life. Now, go get your bucket of water, sonny, and don't let in the cat!"