But, prompt as our response to Henrietta’s demand for rescue had been, Cousin James was there before us.  He stood in the middle of the dusty road with the tousled mite in his arms, soothing her frightened sobs against his cheek with the dearest tenderness and patting Sallie on the back with the same comforting.

“Oh, Henrietta, how could you nearly kill your little sister like this?” Sallie sobbed.  “Please say something positive to her, James!”

“Henrietta,” began Cousin James with a suspicion of embarrassment at Polk’s and my presence at the domestic scene.  Polk choked a chuckle and I could have murdered him.

“Wait a minute,” said Henrietta, in her most commanding voice.  “Sallie, didn’t you ask me to take that Pup from Aunt Dilsie, ’cause of the phthisic, and keep her quiet while the Kit got a nap, and didn’t I ask you if it would be all right if I got her back whole and clean?”

“Yes, Henrietta, but you—­”

“Ain’t she whole all over and clean?”

“Yes, but—­”

“Couldn’t nobody do any better than that with one of them twins.  I won’t try.  If I have to ’muse her it has to be in my own way.”  And with her head in the air the Bunch marched up the walk to the house.

At this Polk shouted and the rest of us laughed.

“Polk, please don’t encourage Henrietta in the way she treats me and her little sisters,” Sallie begged between her laughs and her half-swallowed sobs.  “I need my friends’ help with my children, not to have them make it hard for me.  Henrietta is devoted to you and you could influence her so for the best.  Please try to help me make a real woman out of her and not some sort of a terrible—­terrible suffragette.”

Sallie is the most perfectly lovely woman I almost ever saw.  She has great violet eyes with black lashes that beg you for a piece of your heart, and her mouth is as sweet as a blush rose with cheeks that almost match it in rosiness.  She and the babies always remind me of a cluster rose and roses, flower and buds, and I don’t see why every man that sees her is not mad about her.  They all used to be before she married, and I suppose they will be again as soon as the crepe gets entirely worn off her clothes.  As she stood with the bubbly baby in her arms and looked up at Polk I couldn’t see how he could take it calmly.

“Sallie,” he answered seriously, with a glint in his eyes over at me, “if you’ll give me a few days longer, I will then have found out by experience what a real woman is and I’ll begin on Henrietta for you accordingly.”

“Don’t be too hard on the kiddie,” Cousin James answered him with the crinkle in the corner of his eyes that might have been called shrewd in eyes less beautifully calm.  “Let’s trust a lot to Henrietta’s powers of observation of her mother and—­her neighbors.”  He smiled suddenly, with his whole face, over both Sallie and me, and went on down the street in a way that made me sure he was forgetting all about all of us before he reached the corner of the street.