“I will, most assuredly, if that’s what’s expected of me for the ceremony,” answered Everett with a delightful laugh.  “Here’s a pan of delicacies for the hens, and this bucket is for you to bring some shelled corn for Miss Rose Mary to parch for them, when you come to the house.”

“I’m not a-counting on going any time soon,” answered Uncle Tucker with a shrewd glance up at Everett as he came and stood in the doorway beside the tall young man, who lounged against one of the door posts.  Uncle Tucker was himself tall, but slightly bent, lean and brown, with great, gray, mystic eyes that peered out from under bushy white brows.  Long gray locks curled around his ears and a rampant forelock stood up defiantly upon his wide, high brow.  At all times his firm old mouth was on the eve of breaking into a quizzical smile, and he bestowed one upon Everett as he remarked further: 

“The barn is man’s instituted refuge in the time of mop and broom cyclones in the house.  I reckon you can’t get on to your rock-picking in the fields now, but you really hadn’t oughter dig up an oil-well to-day anyway; it might kinder overshadow the excitement of the party.”

“Mr. Alloway, has any other survey of this river bend been made before?” asked Everett as he looked keenly at Uncle Tucker, while he lit his cigar from the cob pipe the old gentleman accommodatingly handed him.

“Well, yes, there was a young fellow came poking around here not so long ago with a little hammer pecking at the rocks.  I didn’t pay much attention to him, though.  He never stayed but one day, and I was a-cutting clover hay, and too busy to notice him much ’cept to ask him in to dinner.  He couldn’t seem to manage his chicken dumplings for feeding his eyes with Rose Mary, and he didn’t have time to give up much information about sech little things as oil-wells and phosphate beds.  You know, they has to be a good touch of frost over a man’s ears before he can tend to business, with good-looking dimity passing around him.”  And Uncle Tucker laughed as he resumed the puffing of his pipe.

“And after the frost they are not at all immune—­to such dimity,” answered Everett with an echo of Uncle Tucker’s laugh, as a slight color rose up under the tan of his thin face.  As he spoke he ruffled his own dark red mop of hair, which was slightly sprinkled with gray, over his temples.  Everett was tall, broad and muscular, but thin almost to gauntness, and his face habitually wore the expression of deep weariness.  His eyes were red-brown and disillusioned, except when they joined with his well-cut mouth in a smile that brought an almost boyish beauty back over his whole expression.  There was decided youth in the glance he bestowed upon Uncle Tucker, whose attention was riveted on the manoeuvers of the General and Tobe, who were busy with a pair of old kitchen knives in an attack upon the grass growing between the cracks of the front walk.

“So you have had no report as to what that survey was?” Everett asked Uncle Tucker, again bringing him back to the subject in hand.  “Do you know who sent the man you speak of to prospect on your land?”