But, just as suddenly, a vision came into my mind of the long table across the road at Widegables, with the Mossback seated at one end with only two or three of his charges stretched along the empty sides to keep him company.

I wanted him to be here with us!  I wanted him badly, and I went to get him.  I excused myself suddenly, telling them all just why.  I didn’t look at Polk, but Cousin Martha’s face was lovely, as she told me to run quickly.

I found him on the front porch, smoking his pipe alone, while the two little relics, whom he had had left to dine with him, were taking their two respective naps.  Our dinner was late on account of the initiation of Petunia, and he had finished before we began.

“I stole most of your family to-day,” I plunged headlong into my errand, “but I want you, too, most of all.”

“You’ve got me, even if you do prefer to keep me across the road from you,” he answered, with the most solemn expression on his face, but with a crinkle of a smile in the corners of his deep eyes.

I can’t remember when I didn’t look with eagerness for that crinkle in his eyes, even when I was a child and he what I at that time considered a most glorious grownup individual, though he must have been the most helpless hobbledehoy that ever existed.

“You don’t need another vine,” I answered mutinously.

“You know I want you, but Jasper’s is the privilege of looking after you,” he answered calmly.  “I want you to be happy, Evelina,” and I knew as I raised my eyes to his that I could consider myself settled in my own home.

“Well, then, come and have dinner number two with me,” I answered with a laugh that covered a little happy sigh that rose from my heart at the look in the kind eyes bent on mine.

I felt, Jane, you would have approved of that look!  It was so human to human.

He came over with me, and that was one jolly party in the old dining-room.  They all stayed until almost sunset, and almost everybody in town dropped in during the afternoon to welcome me home, and ask me where I was going to live.  Jasper and Petunia hovering in the background, the tea-tray out on the porch set with the silver and damask all of them knew of old, and the appearance of having been installed with the full approval of Cousin Martha and James and the rest of the family, stopped the questions on their lips, and they spent the afternoon much enlivened but slightly puzzled.

Time doesn’t do much to people in a place like the Harpeth Valley, that is out of the stream of modern progress; and most of my friends seem to have just been sitting still, rocking their lives along in the greatest ease and comfort.

Still, Mamie Hall has three more kiddies, which, added to the four she had when I left, makes a slightly high, if charming, set of stair-steps.  Mamie also looks decidedly worn, though pathetically sweet.  Ned was with her, and as fresh as any one of the buds.  Maternity often wilts women, but paternity is apt to make men bloom with the importance of it.  Ned showed off the bunch as if he had produced them all, while Mamie only smiled like an angel in the background.