“Yes, Aunt Amandy, I’ll run over and tell Mrs. Rucker, and then we will begin right away to get things ready.  I am so glad Aunt Viney is—­”

“Rose Mamie, Rose Mamie,” came another loud hail from up the path toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy setter frisking in his wake.  “Aunt Viney says for you to come there to her this minute.  They is a-going to be the party and it’s right by the Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too.  Tobe Poteet said ‘shoo’ when I told him he couldn’t come, ’cause they wasn’t a-going to be no party on account of worrying the Lord about forgetting Aunt Viney, and I was jest a-going to knock him into stuffings, ’cause they can’t nobody say ‘shoo’ at the Bible or Aunt Viney neither, to me, when there Aunt Viney called for us to go tell everybody that the party was a-going off and be sure and come.  I believe God let her call me before I hit Tobe, ’cause I ain’t never hit him yet, and maybe now I never will have to.”  The General paused, and an expression of devout thankfulness came into his small face at thus being saved the necessity of administering chastisement to his henchman, Tobe the adventurous.

“I believe he did, Stonie, and how thankful I am,” exclaimed little Miss Amanda, with real relief at this deliverance of young Tobe, who was her especial, both self-elected and chosen, knight from the General’s cohorts.

“Yes’m,” answered Stonie.  “Come on now, Rose Mamie!  Put your hand on me, Aunt Amandy, and I’ll go slow with you,” and presenting his sturdy little shoulder to Miss Amanda on one side and drawing Rose Mary along with him on the other, Stonewall Jackson hurried them both away to the house.

“Well,” remarked Uncle Tucker to himself as he took up a measure of grain from a bin in the corner of the feed-room and scattered some in front of a row of half-barrel nests upon which brooded a dozen complacent setting hens, “well, if the Lord has to pester with the affairs of Sweetbriar to the extent Stonie and the sisters, Rose Mary, too, are a-giving Him the credit of doing looks like we might be a-getting more’n our share of His attentions.  I reckon by the time He gets all the women and children doings settled up for the day He finds some of the men have slipped the bridle and gone.  That would account for some of these here wild covortings around in the world we hear about by the newspapers.  But He’ll git ’em some day sure as—­”

“Am I interrupting any confidence between you and the Mrs. Biddies, Mr. Alloway?” asked Everett, as he stood in the barn door with a pan in one hand and a bucket in the other.

“No, oh, no,” answered Uncle Tucker with a laugh.  “I was jest remarking how the Almighty had the lasso of His love around the neck of all the wild young asses a-galloping over the world and would throw ’em in His own time.  Well, I hear you’re a-going to get a sochul baptism into Sweetbriar along about a hour before sundown.  Better part your hair in the middle and get some taller for your shoes.”