“Now, fly-away, ain’t that too bad!” exclaimed Uncle Tucker.  “That baby oughter be sent back until it has got manners to wait until it’s wanted.  Didn’t neither one of you all get here on anybody’s birthday but your own.”  Uncle Tucker’s sally was greeted by a duet of giggles, and the announcement committee hurried on across the street with its news.

“Tucker, you Tucker, don’t you touch that snowball bush with the spade!” came in a fresh and alarmed command from the rocker post of observation.  “You know Ma didn’t ever let that bush be touched after it had budded.  You spaded around it onct when you was young and upty and you remember it didn’t bloom.”

“Muster been a hundred years ago if I was ever upty about this here flower job,” he answered in an undertone to Everett as he turned his attention to the rose-bushes at which his apprentice had been pegging away.  “At weddings and bornings and flower tending man is just a worm under woman’s feet and he might as well not even hope to turn.  All he can do is to—­”

But it was just at this juncture when Uncle Tucker’s patience was about to be exhausted, that a summons from Rose Mary came for a general getting ready for the birthday celebration.

And in a very few hours the festivities were in full swing.  Miss Lavinia sat in state in her rocker and received the offerings and congratulations of Sweetbriar as they were presented in various original and characteristic forms.  Young Peter Rucker, still a bit unsteady on his pink and chubby underpinning, was steered forward to present his glossy buckeye, hung on a plaited horse-hair string that had been constructed by small Jennie with long and infinite patience.  Miss Lavinia’s commendations threw both donor and constructor into an agony of bashfulness from which Pete took refuge in Rose Mary’s skirts and Jennie behind her mother’s chair.  But at this juncture the arrival on the scene of action of young Bob Nickols with a whole two-horse wagon-load of pine cones, which the old lady doted on for the freshing up of the tiny fires always kept smoldering in her andironed fireplace the summer through, distracted the attention of the company and was greeted with great applause.  Bob had been from early morning over on Providence Nob collecting the treasures, and, seated beside him on the front of the wagon, was Louisa Helen Plunkett, blushing furiously and most obviously avoiding her mother’s stern eye of inquiry as to where she had spent the valuable morning hours.

The sensation of young Bob’s offering was only offset at the unpacking of the complacent Mr. Crabtree’s gift, which he bore over from the store in his own arms.  With dramatic effect he placed it on the floor at Miss Lavinia’s feet and called for a hatchet for its opening.  And as from their wrappings of paper and excelsior he drew two large gilt and glass bottles, one containing bay rum and the other camphor, that precious lotion for fast stiffening