joints, little Miss Amanda heaved a sigh of positive rapture.  Mr. Crabtree was small and wiry, with a hickory-nut countenance and a luscious peach of a heart, and, though of bachelor condition, he at all times displayed sympathetic and intuitive domestic inclinations.  He kept the Sweetbriar store and was thus in position to know of the small economies practised by the two old ladies in the matter of personal necessities.  For the months past they had not bought the quantity of lubricating remedies that he considered sufficient and this had been his tactful way of supplying enough to last for some time to come.  And from over the pile of gifts heaped around her, Miss Lavinia beamed upon him to such an extent that he felt like following young Pete’s example, committing the awful impropriety of hiding his embarrassment in any petticoat handy, but just at this juncture up the front walk came the birthday cake navigating itself by the long legs of Mr. Caleb Rucker and attended by a riot of Sweetbriar youth, mad with excitement over its safe landing and the treat in prospect.  In its wake followed Mrs. Rucker, complacent and beaming over the sensation caused by this her high triumph in the culinary line.

“Fly-away, if that’s not Providence Nob gone and turned to a cake for Sister Viney’s birthday,” exclaimed Uncle Tucker, as amid generous applause the offering was landed on a table set near the rocker.

And again at this auspicious moment a huge waiter covered with little mountains of white ice-cream made its appearance through the front door, impelled by the motive power of Mr. Mark Everett’s elegantly white-flannel-trousered legs, and guided to a landing beside the cake by Rose Mary, who was a pink flower of smiles and blushes.

Then it followed that in less time than one would think possible the company at large was busy with a spoon attached to the refreshments which to Sweetbriar represented the height of elegance.  Out in the world beyond Old Harpeth ice-cream and cake may have lost caste as a fashionable afternoon refreshment, having been succeeded by the imported custom of tea and scones or an elaborate menu of reception indigestibles, but in the Valley nothing had ever threatened the supremacy of the frozen cream and white-frosted confection.  The men all sat on the end of the long porch and accepted second saucers and slices and even when urged by Rose Mary, beaming with hospitality, third relays, while the Swarm in camp on the front steps, under the General’s management, seconded by Everett, succeeded in obtaining supplies in a practically unlimited quantity.

“Looks like Miss Rose Mary’s freezer ain’t got no bottom at all,” said Mr. Rucker in his long drawl as he began on a fourth white mound.  “It reminds me of ’the snow, the snow what falls from Heaven to earth below,’ and keeps a-falling.”  Mr. Rucker was a poet at heart and a husband to Mrs. Rucker by profession, and his flights were regarded by Sweetbriar at large with a mixture of pride and derision.