“Oh, I think you are a genius to think about it,” I gasped, as I sat down on a very cruet Killarney branch and just as quickly sat up again, receiving comforting expressions of sympathy from across the bush, to which I paid no heed.  “Those blase city men will go crazy about it.  We can have the barbecue up on the bluff, where we have always had it for the political rallies, and a fish-fry and the country people in their wagons with children tumbling all over everything and—­and you will make a great speech with all of us looking on and being proud of you, because nobody in New York or beyond can do as well.  We can invite a lot of people up from the City and over from Bolivar and Hillsboro and Providence to hear you tell them all about Tennessee while things are cooking and—­”

“This rally is to show off Glendale not—­the Crag,” he interrupted me with a quizzical laugh.

Now, how did he know I called him the Crag in my heart?  I suppose I did it to his face and never knew.  I seem to think right out loud when I am with him and feel out loud, too.  I ignored his levity, that was out of place when he saw how my brain was beginning to work well and rapidly.

“You mean, don’t you, Jamie, that you want to get Glendale past this place that is—­humiliating—­swimming with her head up?” I asked softly past a rose that drooped against my cheek.

Perfectly justifiable tears came to my lashes as I thought what a humiliation it all was to him and the rest of them, to be passed by an opportunity like that and left to die in their gray moldiness off the main line of life—­shelved.

“That is one of my prayers, to get past humiliations, swimming with my head up,” I added softly, though I blushed from my toes to my top curl at the necessity that had called out the prayer the last time.  It’s awful on a woman to feel herself growing up stiff and sturdy by a man’s side and then to get sight of a gourd-vine tangling itself up between them.  I’m the dryad out of one of my own twin oaks down by the gate, and I want the other twin to be—­

I wonder if his eyes really look to other women like deep gray pools that you can look deeper and deeper into and never seem to get to the bottom, no matter if the look does seem to last forever and you feel yourself blushing and wanting to take your eyes away, or if it is just I that get so drowned in them!

“You’ve a gallant stroke, Evelina,” he said softly, as I at last gained possession of my own sight.  “And here I am with a hand out to you for assistance in carrying out your own plan that seems to be just the thing to—­”

“Say, Cousin James.  Aunt Marfy says for you to come home to breakfast right away.  Mis’ Hargrove won’t let nobody begin until you says the blessing, and Cousin Jasmine have got the headache from waiting for her coffee.  What do you want to fool with Evelina this time of day for anyway?” And with the delivery of which message and reproof Henrietta stood on the edge of the path looking down upon us with great and scornful interest.