CHAPTER II

THE FOLKS-GARDEN

“Well,” said Uncle Tucker meditatively, “I reckon a festibul on a birthday can be taken as a kind of compliment to the Lord and no special glorification to yourself.  He instuted your first one Himself, and I see no harm in jest a-marking of the years He sends you.  What are Sister Viney’s special reasons against the junket?”

“Oh, I don’t know what makes Aunt Viney feel this way!” exclaimed Rose Mary with distress in her blue eyes that she raised to Uncle Tucker’s, that were bent benignly upon her as she stood in the barn door beside him.  “She says that as the Lord has granted her her fourscore years by reason of great strength, she oughtn’t to remind Him that He has forgotten her by having an eighty-second birthday.  Everybody in Sweetbriar has been looking forward to it for a week, and it was going to be such a lovely party.  What shall we do?  She says she just won’t have it, and Aunt Amandy is crying when Aunt Viney don’t see it.  She’s made up her mind, and I don’t know what more to say to her.”

“Rose Mary,” said Uncle Tucker, with a quizzical smile quirking at the corners of his mouth, “mighty often the ingredient of permanency is left out in the making up of a woman’s mind, one way or another.  Can’t you kinder pervail with your Aunt Viney some?  I’ve got a real hanker after this little birthday to-do.  Jest back her around to another view of the question with a slack plow-line.  Looks like it’s too bad to—­”

“Rose Mary, oh, Rose Mary, where are ye, child?” came a call in a high, sweet old quaver of a voice from down the garden path, and Miss Amanda hove in sight, hurrying along on eager but tottering little feet.  Her short, skimpy, gray skirts fluttered in the spring breezes and her bright, old eyes peered out from 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.”