Rose of Old Harpeth. Maria Thompson Daviess
the gray shawl she held over her head with tremulous excitement. She was both laughing and panting as Rose Mary threw her arm around her and drew her into the door of the barn. "Sister Viney has consented in her mind about the party, all along of a verse I was just now a-reading to her in our morning lesson. Saint Luke says: 'It is meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again,' and at the same minute the recollection of how sick Mr. Mark has been hit us both. 'There now,' she says, 'you folks can jest go on with that party to-day for the benefit of our young brother Everett's coming to so good after all his sufferings. This time I will consider it as instituted of the Lord, but don't nobody say birthday next April, if I'm here, on no account whatever.' I take it as a special leading to me to have read that verse this morning to Sister Viney, and won't you please go over and tell Sally Rucker to go on with the cake, Rose Mary? Sister Viney called Jennie over by sun-up, when she took this notion, and told her to tell her mother not to make it, even if she had already broke all the sixteen eggs."
"Yes, Aunt Amandy, I'll run over and tell Mrs. Rucker, and then we will begin right away to get things ready. I am so glad Aunt Viney is—"
"Rose Mamie, Rose Mamie," came another loud hail from up the path toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy setter frisking in his wake. "Aunt Viney says for you to come there to her this minute. They is a-going to be the party and it's right by the Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too. Tobe Poteet said 'shoo' when I told him he couldn't come, 'cause they wasn't a-going to be no party on account of worrying the Lord about forgetting Aunt Viney, and I was jest a-going to knock him into stuffings, 'cause they can't nobody say 'shoo' at the Bible or Aunt Viney neither, to me, when there Aunt Viney called for us to go tell everybody that the party was a-going off and be sure and come. I believe God let her call me before I hit Tobe, 'cause I ain't never hit him yet, and maybe now I never will have to." The General paused, and an expression of devout thankfulness came into his small face at thus being saved the necessity of administering chastisement to his henchman, Tobe the adventurous.
"I believe he did, Stonie, and how thankful I am," exclaimed little Miss Amanda, with real relief at this deliverance of young Tobe, who was her especial, both self-elected and chosen, knight from the General's cohorts.
"Yes'm," answered Stonie. "Come on now, Rose Mamie! Put your hand on me, Aunt Amandy, and I'll go slow with you," and presenting his sturdy little shoulder to Miss Amanda on one side and drawing Rose Mary along with him on the other, Stonewall Jackson hurried them both away to the house.
"Well," remarked Uncle Tucker to himself as he took up a measure of grain from a bin in the corner of the feed-room and scattered some in front of a row of half-barrel nests upon which brooded a dozen complacent setting hens, "well, if the Lord has to pester with the affairs of Sweetbriar to the extent Stonie and the sisters, Rose Mary, too, are a-giving Him the credit of doing looks like we might be a-getting more'n our share of His attentions. I reckon by the time He gets all the women and children doings settled up for the day He finds some of the men have slipped the bridle and gone. That would account for some of these here wild covortings around in the world we hear about by the newspapers. But He'll git 'em some day sure as—"
"Am I interrupting any confidence between you and the Mrs. Biddies, Mr. Alloway?" asked Everett, as he stood in the barn door with a pan in one hand and a bucket in the other.
"No, oh, no," answered Uncle Tucker with a laugh. "I was jest remarking how the Almighty had the lasso of His love around the neck of all the wild young asses a-galloping over the world and would throw 'em in His own time. Well, I hear you're a-going to get a sochul baptism into Sweetbriar along about a hour before sundown. Better part your hair in the middle and get some taller for your shoes."
"I will, most assuredly, if that's what's expected of me for the ceremony," answered Everett with a delightful laugh. "Here's a pan of delicacies for the hens, and this bucket is for you to bring some shelled corn for Miss Rose Mary to parch for them, when you come to the house."
"I'm not a-counting on going any time soon," answered Uncle Tucker with a shrewd glance up at Everett as he came and stood in the doorway beside the tall young man, who lounged against one of the door posts. Uncle Tucker was himself tall, but slightly bent, lean and brown, with great, gray, mystic eyes that peered out from under bushy white brows. Long gray locks curled around his ears and a rampant forelock stood up defiantly upon his wide, high brow. At all times his firm old mouth was on the eve of breaking into a quizzical smile, and he bestowed one upon Everett as he remarked further:
"The barn is man's instituted refuge in the time of mop and broom cyclones in the house. I reckon you can't get on to your rock-picking in the fields now, but you really hadn't oughter dig up an oil-well to-day anyway; it might kinder overshadow the excitement of the party."
"Mr. Alloway, has any other survey of this river bend been made before?" asked Everett as he looked keenly at Uncle Tucker, while he lit his cigar from the cob pipe the old gentleman accommodatingly handed him.
"Well, yes, there was a young fellow came poking around here not so long ago with a little hammer pecking at the rocks. I didn't pay much attention to him, though. He never stayed but one day, and I was a-cutting clover hay, and too busy to notice him much 'cept to ask him in to dinner. He couldn't seem to manage his chicken dumplings for feeding his eyes with Rose Mary, and he didn't have time to give up much information about sech little things as oil-wells and phosphate beds. You know, they has to be a good touch of frost over a man's ears before he can tend to business, with good-looking dimity passing around him." And Uncle Tucker laughed as he resumed the puffing of his pipe.
"And after the frost they are not at all immune—to such dimity," answered Everett with an echo of Uncle Tucker's laugh, as a slight color rose up under the tan of his thin face. As he spoke he ruffled his own dark red mop of hair, which was slightly sprinkled with gray, over his temples. Everett was tall, broad and muscular, but thin almost to gauntness, and his face habitually wore the expression of deep weariness. His eyes were red-brown and disillusioned, except when they joined with his well-cut mouth in a smile that brought an almost boyish beauty back over his whole expression. There was decided youth in the glance he bestowed upon Uncle Tucker, whose attention was riveted on the manoeuvers of the General and Tobe, who were busy with a pair of old kitchen knives in an attack upon the grass growing between the cracks of the front walk.
"So you have had no report as to what that survey was?" Everett asked Uncle Tucker, again bringing him back to the subject in hand. "Do you know who sent the man you speak of to prospect on your land?"
"Never thought to ask him," answered Uncle Tucker, still with the utmost unconcern. "Maybe Rose Mary knows. Women generally carry a reticule around with 'em jest to poke facts into that they gather together from nothing put pure wantin'-to-know. Ask her."
And as he spoke Uncle Tucker began to busy himself getting out the grease cans, with the evident intention of putting in a morning lubricating the farm implements in general.
"Your friend, Mr. Gideon Newsome, said something about a rumor of paying phosphate here in the Harpeth bend when I met him over in Boliver before I came to Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?" Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of what might lay under the fields, the top of which he was so interested in cultivating.
"Oh, I reckon not," answered Uncle Tucker, puffing away as he laid out his monkey-wrenches. "The Honorable Gid is up to his neck in this here no-dram wave what is a-sweeping around over the state and pretty nigh rising up as high as the necks of even private liquor bottles. Gid's not to say a teetotaler, but he had to climb into the bandwagon skiff or sink outen sight. He's got to tie down his seat in the state house with a white ribbon, and he's got no mind for fooling with phosphate dirt. He's a mighty fine man, and all of Sweetbriar thinks a heap of him. Do you want to help me lift this wagon wheel on to this jack, so I can sorter grease her up against the next time I use her?"
"Say, Uncle Tuck, Aunt Viney says for you to come right there now and bring Mr. Mark and a spade and a long string with you," came just at the critical moment