The Tinder-Box

by Maria Thompson Daviess

And the sight of dear old Jane "mixing" with those Harpeth Valley farmer folk was one of the things I have put aside to remember for always. They all knew me, of course, and I was a bit teary at their greetings. Big motherly women took me in their arms and younger ones laid their babies in my arms and laughed and cried over me, while every few minutes some rugged old farmer would call out for Colonel Shelby's "little gal" and look searchingly in my face for the likeness to my fire-eating, old Confederate, politician father.

But it was Jane that took them by storm and kept them, too, through the crisis of the day. Jane is the reveille the Harpeth Valley has been waiting for for fifty years. I thought I was, but Jane is it.

And it was into an atmosphere of almost hilarious enjoyment that the distinguished Commission arrived a few minutes before noon, just as Jasper's barbecue-pits were beginning to send forth absolutely maddening aromas.

Nell whirled up the hill first and turned her Buick across the road by the bluff with that rakish skill of hers that always sends my heart into my throat. And whom did she have sitting at her blue, embroidered linen elbow but Richard Hall himself? Good old big, strong dandy Dickie, how great it was to see him again, and if I had had my own heart in my breast it would have leaped with delight at the sight of him! But even the Crag's that I had exchanged mine for, though it was an entire stranger to Dickie, beat fast enough in sympathy with the dance in my eyes to send the color up to my face in good fashion as I hurried across a clump of golden-rod to meet him.

"Evelina, the Lovely!" he exclaimed in his big booming voice, as he took me by both shoulders and shook me instead of shaking merely my hand.

"Richard the Royal!" I answered in our old Quartier Latin form of greeting. I didn't look right into his eyes as I always had, however, and something sent a keen pain through the exchanged heart in my breast at the thought that I might be obliged to hurt the dandy old dear.

But suddenly the sight of Nell's loveli ness cheered me. She had had Dick in that car with her ever since nine o'clock, almost three hours, showing him the sights of that teeming heavy lush harvest countryside around Bolivar and Glendale, all over which are low-roofed old country houses which brood over families that cluster around the unit that one man and a woman make in their commonwealth. Nell's eyes were sweet as she looked at him. I'll wait and see if I need to worry over him. With the fervor I felt I had a right to, I then avoided the issue of Richard's eyes, put it up to God and Nell, and introduced him to Jane.

And while the three of them stood waiting for Nell to back up the Buick and put her spark-plug in her pocket,—only Richard calmly took it and put it in his,—the rest of the cars came up the hill and turned into the edge of the golden-rod.

Aunt Augusta was in the first one with the Chairman of the Commission, whose name even would have paralyzed anybody but Aunt Augusta; and Mamie and Cousin Martha, Caroline and several more of the ladies made up the rest of the Committee who had gone to escort the distinguished guests to the rally.

The Crag was in the last car with a perfectly delicious old gray-haired edition of Dickie, and I almost fell on both their necks at once. What saved them was Polk appearing between us with three long mint-topped glasses.