Chapter III: Part 3

"Heel--what heel? Oh, that's all right. I haven't heard from it since you tucked it away in the cream Tuesday night. I have cold-bucketed myself every morning, standing on one leg with it up on the wash-bench so as not to wake it up. Come on up to the house. I'll walk, because I'm too muddy to get in with you in your sedan-chair."

"No; you go back to the plowing and I'll go and unload and begin my work," I answered, with positive heroism. I wanted to get out and go and be introduced to the mule, but I came to Sam to be not a clinging vine, but a competent garden-hoe to him.

"All right," said Sam, in the nice way he has of acquiescing in all my serious moods until they pass. "I'll be through after about three more rounds and then I'll come and help you. Say, Bettykin, what do you think of that for good land?" And as he looked back at the great square of black earth he had upturned, Sam's eyes flecked with the blue sky and snapped with enthusiasm.

"It looks good enough to eat," I answered, with a queer dirt enthusiasm rising in me that I had never even heard of one's having before.

"Yes, and you will eat it in about four months' time in the form of roasting ears," answered Sam, smacking his lips, which had a streak of the mud delicacy across them at right angles. "But go on up and tell Mammy to put your name in her dinner-pot and buy the Byrd to get you anything you need or want to the half of our kingdom. I'll be there in ten shakes of the mule's tail."

The road that leads from the cedar-pole gate through Sam's wilderness up to the farm-house curves in and out and around the hill past as many lovely spots as my enthusiasm could endure. Halfway up, there is a glimpse past a gray old tree with crimson thorns, of the valley with Old Harpeth looming opposite. Further on a rocky old road leads down around a clump of age-distorted cedar-trees to the moss-greened stone spring-house, from which the water gurgles and pours past Sam's huge earthern crocks of milk. Over it all broods the low white house on the plateau, from under whose wings I found one small blue chicken running and cheeping wildly for a ride up the hill.

The Byrd was, as usual, attired in miniatures of Sam's overalls, and his red mop stood on ends all over his head, while his freckles shone forth resplendently from the excitement of my arrival.

"Say, Betty, what you think? Old Buttercup found a calf out in the woods and it has got a white nose and two spots. Sam wanted to name it Chubb for the doctor that saved its life 'fore it got borned, but I said ladies first, and I calls it Betty. You can let it lick your fingers if Sam milks on 'em first. And Dominick have hatched 'fore the white hen--eleven, and one what Sam calls a half chicken, because he don't see how it is black when the eggs was bought thoroughbreds; but Mammy says because they is Yankee eggs. Come see all everything."

Sam's barn is an old tumble-down collection of sheds and the most lovely place I ever got into. It is running over with new-born life, and you can get an armful of first one variety and then another. I liked the collie puppies best, but the Byrd was crazy about the little fawn calf which old Buttercup is so proud of that she switches her tail in the greatest complacency. He was just showing me how to tempt her little white nose with a wisp of hay that she was learning to eat, and I was luxuriating with one new-born wriggler in my arms and two yellow-down puff-balls in my hand, when Sam and the mule came up from the field.

"My, it's great to have a nice family party like this to plow for!" he said, as he led the mule into his stall and poured down his oats out of a bucket the Byrd ran to bring him. "Any news from Petie, Bettykin?"

"I've got a letter from Peter that I haven't read, but one from Judge Vandyne that I have. Here it is--read it," and I held the letter open for Sam to read over my shoulder.

"Read it to me, Betty; I'm too dirty to come that near you," he said, as he took the cob pipe out of his pocket and prepared to light up while the Byrd scampered to the house to hurry Mammy's dinner.

"You're not exactly dirty, Sam," I answered, surveying him with a satisfiedly critical eye. "You only look and smell like the earth and the sky and the barn and--and--"

"Just call it cosmic, Betty, and let it go at that," he answered, as he reached out and roughed my hair over my eyes with the long hickory switch with which he had been merely threatening the mule all day. "Go on, read me the judge's document on the subject of Peter while we wait for Mammy's dinner cluck."

As he had asked me to do, I read it all, slowly, while my heart, that had been climbing like a squirrel to the tops of the trees, began to burrow down in the reverse manner of a chipmunk. I could see Sam's spirits doing likewise.

"The judge gets under Pete's skin and peels the fat off him," said Sam, slowly, with sadness in his deep, strong voice. "I've just got to build some sort of a poet's corner to put him in, so he can come on down from Philadelphia from the opening of the spring Academy. He will have burned himself out by then, and he'll be so weak we can feed him out of a bottle."

"And it's his play, too, Sam," I answered, despondently. "He's beginning on the third act, and just reading it all and suggesting in spots is making me thin. It is all the terrible heroic struggle of the poor hero now and he doesn't seem to let the heroine help him a bit. Oh, Sam, if Peter were to fail with this play after Farrington has encouraged him I don't know what might happen! I'm sorry you ever mentioned Keats to me. I dream about him at night. I adored him when I was at The Manor, and so did Mabel," and my lips quivered so I had to turn against the harness hanging on the wall against which I drooped.

"Keats or Peter?" asked Sam as he pressed his whip across my shoulders in comforting little licks because his hand was too muddy to pat me.

"Both," I sniffed.

"Don't," said Sam, with cheering command in his voice. "We are too late to help Keats, and plenty early to pull Pete out of his divine fire. Let's go get some good grub from Mammy so we can plant the garden before sundown, and stake out the poet's corner, too. I didn't have the money to hire the plowing done, but I am almost through for the present; and I can whirl in now and get in shape for Petie's rescue in no time."

"It's popped its skin with stuffing, and Mammy says come on while the 'taters stands up stiff," announced the Byrd, half-way up the path from the house to the barn.

"He's talking about a duckling, but let's hope Peter can be mentioned in the same terms in the near future," said Sam, as he drove the fleet Byrd and me before him with the switch, in a scamper to Mammy and food.

"Yes," said Sam, as he stood an hour later in the middle of the plot under the south window, which spread out in the sun like a great black lake, smooth from his repeated plowing and harrowing, "that is the richest bit of land at The Briers or in Benton County. It will bring some posies for you, Bettykin."

"I'm not going to plant just flowers in it, Sam," I answered in a tone that admitted of no discussion, "Do you remember the part of grandmother's book that told what she made off of the southern half-acre of hers the year everything failed? I've got it right here, and I'm going to follow it," and as I spoke I hugged the ancestral garden to my breast with one arm, while I held the old grass basket I had made for Sam in my infancy in the other hand, with all my town seeds in it.

"Oh, there's plenty of garden-land all over the place, Betty. Come on and sow the posies."

"There's not plenty of onion and beet and lettuce and okra and tomato and celery land right at the well, Sam, that Byrd and I can carry water from," I answered, positively. "Is this land mine or yours?"

"Yours."

"Wait. I forgot!" I exclaimed in sudden, embarrassed consternation. "Are you renting this land to me, Sam?"

"Renting it to you, Betty?" For a second Sam's eyes blazed in a way I hadn't seen since the time I didn't want to take all of the one fish we caught after a hot day's fishing out at Little Harpeth at our tenth and fourteenth years. Then, suddenly, a queer expression came up and drowned the anger in his eyes and twitched at the comers of his mouth until I recognized it as humor.

"I believe it would be better for us both to crop it on shares, as you are going to put in foodstuffs, too. I am cropping on onions with old Charlie Wade, down the road, and with sugar-beets with Hen Bates. In this case it would be about fair for you to furnish the seeds and I the land, all labor that each of us puts in to be charged against the gross receipts. I'll just enter you in my time-book now. Let's see--it is one-fifteen," and as he spoke Sam took out, first his watch, and then a muddy little book that had time-tables and all sorts of almanac things in it.

For a second I was as mad as I was when he handed me the two-inch fish and ordered me to take it in for the cook to have for my supper; but in a second I saw just what he had done to me and I didn't dare remonstrate.

"How much do I get an hour?" I asked, with the greatest dignity, as I threw the seed-basket and my hat on the ground and picked up my rusty old hoe, ready for business.

"I charge myself at twelve and a half cents. Are you worth about--about fifteen?" he asked in a business-like tone of voice, but I saw a twitch at the corners of his mouth that made me boil with rage.

"Put me down at six and a quarter for the present," I answered, haughtily.

"Down she goes," he answered, as he thus minimized me with his pencil and put the book back in his pocket. "Now, where do you want me to heave in the lilacs so as to get the two corners of the garden to guide the rows by? Shall they run north and south or east and west? It really doesn't make much difference."

"East and west, then," I answered, calmly, though my hand clenched over the hollyhock seeds which I had put in an envelope in the pocket of my corduroy skirt. It was cruelly thoughtless of him--this selection of the lilacs for the corner-stones of the garden after making me so happy, not a month ago, with that lovely sentiment about wanting to plant the hollyhock seeds first in memory of the dolls of our youth. "Peter will enjoy looking down the rows from the living-room window better than across them," I added, quickly, for fear he would humiliate me by remembering that he had forgotten the hollyhock seeds he had stolen for me.

"Say where and I'll dig for you," he said; but I saw a glint of something fairly shoot from his eyes.

"Here," I said, and stood at a nice right angle from the corner of the house and the old cedar-tree he had said he could nail the wires to to save a post, when he had to put up a fence.

He came over promptly with the spade and poised it to dig into the ground--and my heart.

Then he hesitated, and looked at me quickly for a second. Then he threw down the spade and said, quietly:

"I'll go get that rotted stump dirt before I break ground for the lilacs, and you can think about things while you wait." With that he lifted the wheelbarrow and trundled out of the situation, leaving me in the depths of a hurt uncertainty.

But if Samuel Foster Crittenden thought I was as stupid as that, he had a chance to learn better--at least I thought I would give him one. I'm not sure yet that I did.

As soon as he was out of sight I flew to the end of the garden, where I thought the row of hollyhocks would make a lovely background for all the long lines of vegetables and flowers running into it, sighted with my eye, ran a trench with the rusty old hoe, flung in my seeds, and covered it up in less time than it takes to tell it. When Sam came back I had spaded out at least two and a half shovelfuls of dirt, that I found surprisingly heavy, from the hole for the first lilac. I saw him start and hesitate as if about to say something, and then I think--I think, but I can't be sure--his eyes rested on my hasty and surreptitious gardening.

"You are the real thing, Betty," was all he said as he roughed my hair, first back and then down over my eyes, and took Grandmother Nelson's spade from my hand and began to make the dirt fly out of the hole. I wonder what I'll say when those hollyhocks come up.

And then we all worked. It astonished me to find what one man, one woman, and one small boy can do to a plot of earth in three hours, with a string, sharpened sticks, seed, hoes, spades, rakes, and radiant happiness. At four o'clock we all three sank down in a heap at the end of the last row of green peas in delicious exhaustion.

"Nice little seed, I'll dig you up to-morrow to see how you feel," said the Byrd as he patted in a stray pea he had found with the beets. "I can't dig you all up, but I will as many as I can."

"Yes, you will--not," said Sam, reaching for him as he skimmed and dipped away. And then followed a lecture on floriculture, agriculture, and horticulture that I immensely enjoyed.

"Yes," assented the fledgling, with the greatest intellectual enthusiasm, "baby beets folds up jest that way," and he illustrated after Sam, with his grubby little paddies, "same as chickens in eggs and--"

"Come on, Betty, let's go select the spot for the cedar-log temple for Peter's muses," Sam interrupted as he made a lightning grab for the Byrd and tumbled him back into the loamy earth.

I realized then that up to a quarter of five o'clock on that twenty-first-of-April day I had been really wretchedly uneasy about Peter in every way, that I did and did not understand since that scene at the tea-table in the Astor when I had assumed the responsibility of him. But at that moment when Sam held back a tangle of blackberry-bushes and low-sweeping dogwood boughs, and we stepped out on a moss-covered rock-ledge that commanded a view of the Harpeth Valley, stretching away and away in an iridescent shimmer of springiness and sunshine, it completely vanished, for the time being, anyway.

"Oh," I said, with a great sigh of relief, "let's plant Peter here. He--he can grow his dream in this place."

"Yes," answered Sam, quietly, "I'll log up and daub up a shack right here, with a stone fireplace. It won't cost anything, for I'll use my own logs and pick up my own stones. Thank God for shoulders and arms which can make shelter for anybody that needs it anywhere," and as he spoke Sam looked across the valley into the blaze of the sun that was beginning to go down behind Paradise Ridge, with that earth-smolder I was beginning to recognize. I knew that David and Moses and Christ had all looked down across new life from a hillside, and Sam seemed almost transfigured to me. And I had a--a vision. I saw that Sam was to be one of a gigantic new kind of men to whom all who were ahungered and athirst would come to be cared for. I had brought Peter to him first, and I knew--I felt that others--that--

"Sam," I said, as I reached out and laid a timid hand, for the first time stained with earth labor, on the blue sleeve of his overalls, "don't ever leave Peter and me anywhere you are not, will you?"

"I'm always here for you both when you need me, Betty. Just call," he answered. "And now you hustle home to Mother Hayes or she won't let me have you at six and a quarter cents any more."

"Make it five, Sam. I feel smaller now."

"No, that'll be Pete's rate. Come on and take the mud-scow back to Eph. Present my compliments to him after he has washed it."

Some people have a way of pruning a friend's spirit in a manner that makes it bush out more hardily than ever. That is the way Sam does me, and I intend to worship him delightfully if I want to and he continues to deserve it. It is so much better for a woman to worship a man than love him; it puts a strong barrier between them to keep him from hurting her, which loving him doesn't seem to, at least not with Edith and Tolly; and I am always worried over Peter; but for long intervals I can forget Sam comfortably and find him right there when I need him.

I am glad that I had that care-free day of hard work with Sam out at The Briers to fatigue me so that I couldn't take Peter's letter completely to heart. I read it, cried over it a minute, and then fell into my bed without even putting rose oil on my cheek curls to hold them in place. My first day at farming had done me up. Still, it's no use to cover up your head from trouble; it's right here by the bed the minute you peep over the top of the sheet. I woke up, feeling that the whole world must be camping on the top of my crocheted lace counterpane; but soon I realized that it was only Peter's play. Peter is stuck in the mud at the beginning of the third act, and he thinks it is quicksands that are going to drown him. The last few sentences of the letter sound like a beautiful funeral oration to himself, and they made me so miserable that I put on my clothes and fled to daddy, who was out smoking his cigar on the front porch in the crisp morning air.

"And Sam can't possibly get ready for him to come down in less than two weeks. He has to build the house in between the plowing and milking and other things. Peter may die. What shall we do?" I wound up with a wail.

"Sam paid off the note on two of the cows and cash for the mule last Monday," answered daddy. "Not a farmer in the Harpeth Valley has done better in less than two years, and I would leave Peter to him. I guess he can fodder up the play, too. Have the poet down to visit mother while he waits."

"He can't come for a week; he's going to be decorated at the Academy. He's the youngest that ever has been; but I'll write and ask him," I answered, in a jumble, but very much comforted.

Peter accepted my invitation and announced his arrival as ten days later. Then real work began among Sam's friends and mine in Hayesboro.

I put the case to them plainly and movingly. Here was a young and distinguished genius coming to settle down in Hayesboro to rescue his play, and it was the duty of everybody to help him in every way. The first thing he had to have was shelter, and we ought to all help Sam as much as we could to provide it for him. He was willing to stay with us for a few days, on mother's invitation, which I had to hide nine crochet-needles to make her write him, but he wrote that his "spirit panted for the wilderness," and if he felt that way about it he ought to be settled in the cabin as soon as possible.

"Why, of course," said Julia, with large and responsive enthusiasm, "we must just all turn in and help Sam. I never helped build a house, but if you can, Betty, so can I."

"I can make curtains and things and cushions for chairs," said Edith, with no less enthusiasm than Julia's. "I have a lovely bureau-scarf all finished and--"

"Chairs--bureau!" I fairly gasped. "Neither Sam nor I had thought of furniture. Sam paid a big note in the bank for the cows and mule, and how can he buy more stock like chairs and bureaus and beds?"

"Why, hasn't Sam got furniture? The Crittenden house had the loveliest in Hayesboro," asked Edith, plaintively.

"He's sold it; Sam is poor," I answered, proudly. "He hasn't got anything but Mammy and Byrd and the other stock, and places for all to sleep and eat and keep warm. Now what are we going to do?"

"He wouldn't let us buy him anything, would he?" asked Sue, thoughtfully.

"I know Sam better than that," said Edith.

"I'll tell you," I exclaimed, suddenly and radiantly. "Of course, we can't give Sam anything, but I believe--I believe that if I asked him very kindly he would let us make a kind of museum of affection of Peter's room and take all the lovely things we can borrow from people to put in the shack to help inspire him. Mother will let me start with Grandmother Nelson's desk, though it is dearer than life to me; and I know she'll crochet him a lamp-mat before he gets here--maybe several, if she likes the pattern she starts on."

"Do you remember that mahogany table in my room?" exclaimed Julia, several minutes lost in deep reflection. "It is real Chippendale, Aunt Amanda says, and I'll send that out. Oh, to think of a poet laying his pen down on it! Or does he use a pencil?"

And it is true that from very small beginnings great trees grow. In this case it was Peter's roof-tree, or rather what was under it. I never saw anything like Hayesboro when it takes generosity in its teeth and runs away, as at the time when Mr. Stanton, the Methodist minister, had thirty-five pounds of sausage sent him from different hog-killings just because in prayer-meeting, when he publicly thanked the Lord for his seventh child, he mentioned that it was welcome, though one more mouth to feed. Of course, the baby didn't need the sausage any more than Peter really needed all the things everybody wanted to send out to make the cabin comfortable for him. Fortunately, Sam kept his head, as the minister did when he sold the sausage and bought groceries for the whole family; he selected only five pieces out of the list of sixty that we gave him, and it took me a day and a half to go around and keep people from getting hurt because he didn't call in his wagon for the things they had got out and rubbed and dusted. And before the sun set on the second day of my explanations I had talked Peter into the very heart of Hayesboro, which was all down to the station to meet him and welcome him. The mayor wanted to have the brass band, but I persuaded him not to do that, but to make Peter a little speech. Miss Henrietta Spain asked to have her school children march down to throw jonquils in his path, and I had to give in to that. Besides, I thought Peter would like it; so did Sam.

But that came later, after six of the longest days any of us ever lived through. We spent them at The Briers, and every soft friend I had is now a hardened specimen. Everybody went out to see Sam and advise him about how to care for a distinguished guest that they all felt that Hayesboro owned and was just lending to Sam for the time being, and they all remained to farm. Most of them had never been to see him before, and they were so delighted that they lost their heads and hearts to the farm. The Briers is like a great, big, beautiful dog that lies there begging you to come and plow it and scratch it and hoe it and rake it, while it licks out green curly vegetable tongues for more. At first Sam seemed slightly overwhelmed by all the offers of help that came with me in Redwheels, dressed in business-like corduroys that had been made like mine, in a hurry, and with hoes and seed-baskets, or that Pink or Tolly drove out in their cars; but he finally entered everybody in the time-book at two and a half cents an hour, gave each a plot of ground that wouldn't do for anything else, and started them off, while he kept on at real work. I'm glad to have every healthy assurance of being in the world when Sam comes to the harvesting of his friendly crops. It will be a great occasion. If Edith's five rows of okra do not net or gross--I forget which is the right term for it--I know she will wilt away, and I dread Sue if her fifty tomato-plants go down before the humble cutworm. Sue won't be humble. Miss Editha came out with us one afternoon and sowed a row of ladies'-slippers and princess-feathers, and it was funny to see old Dr. Chubb, who had driven the ten miles just for the pleasure of seeing Sam (only, Sam said it was in hopes of seeing me), digging and raking for her, while Colonel Menefee, in true military style, commanded them both. Father came once and took Sam away down to a field by himself, and from the look on both their faces I was afraid Sam had again refused to borrow money to buy the mate to the mule he needed so badly. Father was so mad he took off his coat, and he and Tolly split wood enough for the big fireplace to last until midsummer. Sam says that Pink sweat enough soap-grease to make him worth more than two and a half cents, if it could have been collected. He didn't mean us to hear him say it to Pink, but Edith got pale with shock, while daddy roared so that old Buttercup came up the hill to see what was the matter. Julia laughed, and so did I--when we got away from Edith.

It took six good days of such chorus work to get every odd job at The Briers nicely finished up, and daddy and the mayor and Colonel Menefee mended all the rail fences before they rested on the seventh.

Then on Monday morning came the log-raising for the poet's lodge, and everybody assembled long before Sam had nicked the last log with his great big adz. We all sat around on the rocks and ends of the logs and discussed how to begin before Sam got ready to tell us the right way. The colonel and Miss Editha were standing a little to one side, and I knew that he was being sentimental by the fluttering smile that came and went on her tea-rose face; but suddenly he turned and said to daddy, with his fierce old face lighting:

"Just look, Hayes, there's pioneer blood in them yet--and brawn, too," he added, as Tolly and Pink and Billy Robertson stripped off their coats and came forward as Sam knocked the last crimson cedar chip from the last log.

"Steady--up now, Tolly," said Sam, as Tolly bent to one end of one of the long, rough cedar logs, that had so lately been a forest king, but that was now dethroned and shorn of its branching power with which to wrestle with the wind. Pink and Billy got holds in between. "Up--up, boys! Now roll!" shouted Sam again, and with a strain and a heave they landed the first log level and true on the stone underpinnings.

"Hip--hip--hurrah for the poet's house!" shouted Tolly, as he rolled his shirt-sleeves up and spat on his hands to show his readiness for more logs; and we all clapped, while Edith picked up a button that had popped off his shirt with the strain of his big chest underneath.

Then for a second Sam's kind eyes sank down deep into mine and smoldered there. I know he was praying for Peter as the rest cheered. Then he bent and called out:

"Next. Up--up, boys! Steady!"

My eyes misted for a second, and Peter's pale face rose before them in the mist. Peter is a man of dreams, for whom was being harnessed all this sinew and brawn of reality. And men must plow and plant and reap and hew and lift for their vision-bringers, and women must do it also. It is only right. I am willing. Where were the neighbors to the Keatses that they didn't--And I was about to be dissolved in a sea of sentiment when Sam's voice hauled me to the surface as he shouted:

"Hi, Betty, get out and sight this end for a right angle-drop, as I showed you. Wait! Back, boys!"

And after that I held the metal square and sighted until I felt as if I had eaten a right angle, while Sam's crew heaved and raised and dropped and rolled, until all four of the low walls were fitted into the notches, log for log, and the roof-poles were laid just as the sun began to quit his job and get on toward China.

"No four of their young Virginia pioneer ancestors who came over the wilderness trail did it any quicker or better, Colonel," said daddy, as he walked around to the back of the cabin and then again to the front. As he spoke he laid his arm across Sam's shoulder--and I knew that the breach was healed until the next time daddy tried to help him financially.

All the log-raisers went home by twilight, and daddy and I were the last. The Byrd had insisted on showing daddy nine little curly-tailed pigs taking their evening repast at the maternal fount, which they were shyly late in doing because the fledgling perched so near them on the fence to exhibit and direct the repast.

This left me to help Sam gather up his tools and pick up the fragrant cedar chips for Mammy's vesper fire.

"Now, the chimney next and Pete's housed," said Sam, as he sat down on a log right where I was crouching, filling the basket with the chips. "Are you happy, Bettykin?"

"Sam, when I know that Peter is tucked in that little old bed that matches yours that mother gave you out of our garret I am going to breathe so deep that maybe I'll--I'll break my belt," I answered, as I picked a chip from under one of his big farm shoes. "I couldn't stand him on my mind much longer."

"Let him stay comfortably in your heart and don't get him on your mind," answered Sam, as he calmly got out the cob pipe, filled and lighted it. "Pete's great enough to fill both for any woman." And Sam's face took on that devout young prophet-look it always does when he looks at his land or mentions Peter--the look which then began to irritate as well as impress me, I don't exactly know why.

"My mind's not very big and my heart is smaller," I snapped, as I upset part of the basket of chips and had to begin to pick them all up again.

"You're young--you'll grow up--to Pete," said Sam, as he roughed my hair worse than he had ever done since I had forbidden him, picked up my basket and started to the house, leaving me to follow, squaw-fashion and perfectly furious. Now if I don't know whether my troth is plighted to Peter, and Peter doesn't know, I am certain that I can't see why Samuel Foster Crittenden should be so sure of it; and he and I parted anything but friends, a fact over which I could feel daddy chuckle as he sat wedged beside me in the car, though he didn't dare smile. I would wager my first mess of peas that he winked at Sam. I had seen them act that way about me only too often in my infancy. I felt that I hated the whole world until I had to except the fledgling, who rode down to the gate on the running-board just over my left shoulder, while Sam came along to hold him on.

"Betty, you is the prettiest lady they is if your eyes do crinkle when you laugh, and ain't blue. I'd let you kiss me anywhere I'm clean enough, if you bring me just one pigeon that will lay eggs for little ones," he said, as I slowed up for him to climb down to open the gate.

"She could get one cheaper than that, Byrd," said Sam, as he got down to open the gate, while for a second I snuggled the fledgling, whom I always hated to leave out in the woods in the dark, even with Sam's rough hand so near his pillow.

"Thank you," I said, pleasantly, as I drove through the gate, without stopping another ten minutes to chat, as I knew daddy wanted to. I'm glad Samuel Foster Crittenden will never know just exactly what I was cross about, as I wasn't sure myself. It is strange how you can hate a person for whom you have the deep regard I have for Sam, when he has done nothing at all to offend you.

That night I fought it all out with myself about Peter. I felt that Sam had brought the sore spot in my heart to head and I would have to operate and find out what was really there. Accordingly, after I had safely anchored myself in the middle of my old four-poster bed I slashed myself. This is what I found. That I had made up my mind to marry Peter just as soon as he wanted me to, which I knew would not be until after the play was finished down in Sam's wilderness. I had two reasons for my intention. Nobody in the world ever loved and depended on me as Peter has always done since he read me the winning poem that he sent in for his Junior Prize. Peter needs me, and nobody else in the world does. What could love be but giving and cherishing the beloved? By the test of how I longed to do all that to Peter I found out how I loved him. That was the reason I openly admitted, but I am afraid that I was afraid of Sam if I should fail his young David-Keats in any way. He had already warned me what I must be to him, and I felt as I did about that heifer I let get by me the first day I went to dig Sam out of the hollow tree to which he has now had to build a new crotch in order to take in Peter. This time I would head off his calf for him, though I didn't mean to call Peter that, even in the heat of debate with myself. Oh, I could take such good care of Peter and Judge Vandyne, and Mabel would be so glad! My spirits rose at the thought of their joy, and as I felt better, I luxuriated in the thought of Sam's approbation. I would give Peter the answer he had begged for in every letter, help him with the play until it was finished, and then have a glorious wedding, with Edith and Sue and Julia and all the girls. I must have fallen asleep then, for I dreamed that Julia was the bride at my wedding and that I couldn't get there. When I woke from that nightmare I decided to let Sam have the happiness of hearing Peter tell him of my submission to their wishes; and that time I sobbed myself to sleep.

From that fatal night until the afternoon of Peter's arrival, I saw Sam only three times, and those when there were many others with us. I was so sweet and submissive to him that I saw I alarmed him greatly.

Peter arrived according to schedule and was met in the manner planned by our friends. As he stood on the train platform just behind a woman and a baby, I saw his great dark eyes, that seem fairly to glow out of his beautiful face, eagerly race over the crowd. When they rested on me they lit with what I thought was perfect joy until I saw them find Sam a few seconds later. That was the real thing, and I never loved Peter better than when I saw him hold Sam's hand in his while he was greeting me in a suppressed, lover-like way and was being introduced to people. Sam was also radiant. Peter and Sam and I are the eternal triangle that Peter is always talking into plots for plays--only Sam is the apex instead of me. Isn't it beautiful to have it that way?

III

THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER

Hayesboro took Peter into its heart of hearts and then sighed for more to give him. This town is like the old man's horse whose natural gait is running away when it is not asleep. Peter woke it up and it took the bit in its mouth and bolted with him, while Peter clung to the saddle and had the time of his young poetic life.

Mother accepted Peter with her usual placidity. She took him into her room and I suppose she examined him physically, for I saw her give him a dose of sarsaparilla tea every morning he was with us. I bought her five spools of the finest silk thread, ranging in shade from gray to lavender, to begin on a crocheted tie and pair of socks for him. Daddy was as good as gold to him and fell immediately into Judge Vandyne's attitude toward him. I knew he would. Eph maintained the dignity of the haphazard family at meal-times, and waited on Peter worshipfully at all others. The black beauty in the kitchen was heard to remark to the house-girl:

"I hope that white man's skin will stretch, for I shore am going to stuff it. He am a insult to any respectable skillet or pot." She did, and at times I trembled for the poet.

He read to Miss Henrietta Spain's school the poem on "Space" which the _Literary Opinion_ had copied; and he was the greatest possible success. Most of it I feel sure the school didn't understand. But just as he finished the last two lines--those lines the magazine had called "as perfect in winged lyric quality as any lines in the English language could be"--the Byrd, whom Sam had groomed carefully and brought in from the brier-patch for the occasion, rose, and, with his freckles black with the intensity of his comprehension of the poem, spread his little arms and said:

"I fly! I fly!"

"I fly! I fly, too!" A little chubkin in a blue muslin dress just behind him jumped to her feet and echoed him before they could be repressed.

"That was the most perfect tribute I shall ever receive," Peter said, that night out on the porch, after Sam had gone home, carrying the exhausted Byrd, who even in sleep held in one hand the handle of a full basket he had begged from mother, and in the other tightly grasped a sack in which were two "little ones" daddy had got for him. These treasures happened to be young rabbits, and Sam said he would charge daddy with the damages.

"Good old Sam," said Peter, as we stood at the gate by the old lilac, who was beginning to beplume himself more richly than any of his compatriots in Hayesboro--in honor of Peter, I felt sure--and watched Sam and the Byrd jog away in the wagon down Providence Road. "He'll make his mark on his generation yet, Betty. This is just a temporary eclipse of the effulgence of a young planet that will shine with the warm light of humanity when the time comes. There is no man like him. O Samboy!"

"Oh, I love you, Peter, for feeling that way," I exclaimed, heartily, as I grasped his arm with enthusiasm. "You are so wonderful, Peter."

"Dear, dearest Betty," said Peter, as he put his arm through mine, and we both began to swing back and forth on the gate. "It is so marvelous to have a woman respond to your every mood as you do to mine. It is like having in one's possession an angel incarnate in her own harp."

"Oh, Peter you _are_ wonderful!" I again exclaimed, because I felt that way and had no other feeling to draw another remark from. It is so satisfactory to love a man with no variations. I cannot see why girls like to tremble and blush and chill and glow and get angry and repentant about the men they love, as Edith does about Clyde Tolbot. I wish I could make them all understand the great calmness of true love like mine for Peter.

The five days that Peter stayed with mother, Hayesboro did many other things to him. The mayor got up a barbecue in his honor, and they had nine political speeches and two roast pigs and a lamb. Peter came home pale, but we decided before we went to bed to let the hero of "The Emergence" get beaten up a little in the strike before he made his great speech to the capitalist. I felt so happy for the play.

But the next day Peter took tea alone with Miss Editha Morris Carruthers, and he was so charmed with her that he almost decided to let the whole play end in separation.

"But it is so lonely for a woman to be a heroine of a separation, Peter," I pleaded with him as we sauntered up and down the long porch.

"Under such stress souls grow, Betty," he answered, gloomily. "Together lovers feed on the material; apart, on the immaterial. Can we say which is best for the final emergence of the superman and--" Just here Julia came across the street and into our front gate, looking like a ripe peach, in a pink muslin gown, with a huge plate of hickory-nut butter-candy in her hand, and we all three proceeded to material nourishment. I left them for a few minutes while I went up to my room and took out Grandmother Nelson's book. I wanted to be sure that not a single thing would bloom before I got back to The Briers. Peter had insisted that he should not go forth into the wilderness until he could do it dramatically to stay, so I hadn't been out for five days or more and I was wild--simply mad. To have a garden and be separated from it at sprouting and blooming time is worse than any soul separation that ever happened to any woman. Of that I feel sure.

Sue Bankhead was as nice and lovely to Peter as could be, and even Billy Robertson's contentment with himself was slightly ruffled with the way she took him out horseback with her every morning, but her crowning attention was a dance for him. Sue has the loveliest dances in Hayesboro because of her own charm and the fact that the double parlors in the old Bankhead house are sixty-two feet long and forty-six feet wide. The girls were as lovely as a bunch of spring blossoms, and Julia looked like the most gorgeous, pink, fragrant, drooping cabbage-rose as Peter danced with her again and again. I was so glad, because he is as tall as she is, and she is such a good dancer that it must have been as soothing to his tired nerves as a nice wide rocking-chair with billows of blue mull cushions. It was easy to see what she thought of him from the way she looked at him, and poor Pink took me out in the moonlight and swore at me in polite language.

"Why don't you feed your sick poet your own self, Betty, and not let him loose to eat up my girl?" he stormed.

"Oh, Pink, how can you be so ungenerous, when you know how wonderful he is and how wonderful his play will be if you and everybody are kind and good to him while he is writing it," I chided him.

"Well, he had better not put Julia into it without me," he answered, somewhat mollified at my reproof.

"He won't, I know he won't," I hastened to assure him. "Especially if you are nice to him, as you promised. You know, Pink, you are an awfully interesting man in some ways, and I know it is going to do Peter a lot of good to be friends with you; you are so--so substantial."

"That's it; slap my fat! Everybody does," he answered, gloomily.

"It was the mules I was talking about, not you, Pink," I answered, hurriedly, for I know how sensitive he is.

"Well, call me a mule then," he again said, with the deepest depression.

"Now don't be stupid, Pink, and--"

"I am stupid, too!"

"Pink Herriford, will you please tell my friend, Peter Vandyne, about your heroism in stopping the stampede of those thousand mules you were shipping to France in time to save the lives of all of them and about ten men? I seem to have to speak to you in words of two syllables to-night." I could feel my cheeks burn with temper as I spoke and Pink came immediately out of his grouch and into his own happy personality.

"Holy smoke! Betty, but that was some stunt! First I saw a big red mule lift his hind legs in ugly temper, and let fly right and left just as--"

"Oh, wait Pink, let me get Peter!" I exclaimed, as I heard the dance that Pink and I had been arguing out, instead of sitting or dancing out, stop to get breath.

Pink was a wonder as he stood in the center of everybody that I had gathered around him to hear in particular what they had all been talking about in general. We were all spellbound, for it was a really exciting and tremendous recital, and even Julia came out of her daze over Peter to listen with rapt attention, though I imagine she had heard it before.

"Immense!" exclaimed Peter, with his pale, thin face in a perfect flame of excitement just as Pink threw his own body right in front of the largest mule and turned his neck and--

"What?" said Pink, as he glared at Peter suspiciously.

"Perfectly great," said Peter, laying his arm on Pink's. "And I don't see--"

Just here I slipped out onto the porch and sat down on the steps in the starlight to get my breath while the tale of heroism went on from the reassured hero.

And as I stood on the front steps, just out of the noise of "Too Much Mustard" that had again begun its syncopated wail in the house, I began to worry about all my flower children in the country. Sam had not been in for three days, and he had sent word by one of his neighbors that he couldn't get to the dance because he had to cup up potatoes to plant. He had explained to Byrd and me all about how you cut out each little eye with some potato around it for moisture and nourishment while it takes root in the earth, and the Byrd had been especially interested in all the potato-peels ever since. He had almost worn the life out of Mammy begging her not to cut through any of the "little ones" with her knife until she had taken to boiling them whole. And as I sat and pictured them all sitting on the back porch with the big lamp lighted, just cutting away, maybe Byrd still up for the emergency, the whole dance seemed to put on a mask of grinning foolishness and resolve itself, with its jiggy music, into a large bunch of nothing, with me included. I was in a bad way for the best dancer in Hayesboro, not to sound like boastful Billy.

"Well, hello! Can this be Betty the wall-flower?" called a voice from over the fence. It was so out of sight that it might have come from the hollow log out on Old Harpeth if it hadn't been so near. "Won't anybody dance with you, honey-bunch?"

"Nobody; unless you will," I answered, running down toward the voice. And as I came nearer the hedge I saw that a wagon and mule were drawn up in the shadow behind a man. "It's fine for you to come in, after all, Sam. Peter will be so happy."

"Overalls are not invited," answered Sam, as he gave my hair the usual rough with his big horny hand while I reached up and grasped his sleeve, too glad to see him to remonstrate. "I came in for Pete's things, and I brought a load of new peas and ten dozen eggs at the same time, so I couldn't dress for the dance, or have time to dance if I did. Six seventy-five a barrel, and five barrels; how's that for wealth, Bettykin?" As he spoke Sam reached down in his overalls pocket, brought up a big fistful of all kinds of money, and poured it into my tunic of embroidered mull that I held up for it.

"It is the most beautiful money I ever saw," I said, and I had to swallow hard to keep out of my voice the sentiment I knew Sam would not like. I knew how hard he had worked for every cent of it.

"I'll give you that bright new quarter if you think it is so pretty," he said, and of course it couldn't have been emotion that cut his voice off so indistinctly.

"Come on, then, and let me dance for it," I answered. Then myself and money and mull dress,--that came all the way from New York with a three-figured bill--I threw into the blue-jeans arms. And out on the smooth, hard turnpike Sam and I had one glorious fox-trot with only the surprised mule looking on.

"Bring Pete out at about eleven. Your first pea is due to pod about noon. No, I must go now or never," said Sam as he shook me off when I clung and begged for another dance. He climbed up in the wagon. "Good night," he called.

For a long time I stood and watched him standing bolt upright in the wagon and clattering away with his great ugly old mule in a lurching trot; then I went in to the dance. I didn't tell anybody that Sam had been there, because they would all have been disappointed. The way Sam's home town loves him and disapproves of his farming is pathetic. Five miles is a long way for anybody that knows Sam to be separated from him, at least that is the way I felt as Peter slid and skidded and dipped me around while he told me how proud he was of my beauty and the lovely and worthy friends I possessed. He mentioned Julia and Pink and the mules in detail. I think Peter Vandyne has the most grateful, appreciative, sympathetic nature I ever encountered, and I told him so as we walked home across the lawn while the stars were beginning to grow pale and flicker with no more night to burn.

"My heart is full, full, dear, dearest Betty, with you and--and the work. The vision becomes clearer," Peter said, with his great dark eyes looking up at the retreating stars. And as we walked up the steps he told me another struggle he had thought up for the hero to have with his conscience about the poor little waiting heroine. The mule story hadn't done him one bit of good, and I went to bed as cross as two sticks.