“Lovely,” laughed Rose Mary with the delight in her blue eyes matching that in Uncle Tucker’s pair of mystic gray.  “I’ll come just as soon as I get the skimming done.  We’ll want some corn meal and millet seed for the chirp-babies, but the others we can leave to the maternal ministrations.  I’m so full of welcome I don’t see how I’m going to keep it from bubbling over.”

“That’s jest like you, Rose Mary, a-welcoming a whole passel of pesters that have deluged down on you at one time,” said Uncle Tucker with a dubiously appreciative smile at Rose Mary’s hospitable enthusiasm.  “Looks to me like a girl tending three old folks, one rampage of a boy, a mollycuddle of a strange man, and a whole petting spoiled village has got enough on her shoulders without this four-foot, two-foot landslide.”

“But it’s in my heart I carry you all, old Sweetie,” answered Rose Mary with a flirt of her long lashes up at Uncle Tucker.  “A woman can carry things as a blessing in her heart that might be an awful burden on her shoulders.  Don’t you know I don’t allow you out before the sun is up good without your muffler tied up tight?  There; please go on back to the barn and take this crock of skimmed milk to Mrs. Sniffie—­wait, I’ll pour back some of the cream!  And in just a few minutes I’ll be ready to—­”

“Rose Mary, Rose Mary,” came a wild, enthusiastic shout from up the path toward the Briars and in a moment the General appeared around the row of lilac bushes through which the milk-house trail led down under the hill to Rose Mary’s sanctum of the golden treasure.  Stonie had taken time before leaving the seclusion of his apartment to plunge into his short blue jeans trousers, but he was holding them up with one hand and struggling with his gingham shirt, the tail of which bellowed out like a sail in the morning breeze as he sped along.  And in his wake came Tobe with a pan in one hand and a cup in the other.  “It’s two calves, Tobe says, with just Mrs. Butter for the mother and Sniffie beat her with three more puppies than two calves.  It’s sixteen chickens and a passel of turkeys and we waked up Mr. Mark to tell him and he said—­” Stonie paused in the rapid fire of his announcement of the morning news and then added in judicial tone of voice, as if giving the aroused sleeper his modicum of fair play:  “Well, he didn’t quite say it before he swallowed, but he throwed a pillow at Tobe and pulled the sheet over his head and groaned awful.  Aunt Viney was saying her prayers when I went to tell her, and Aunt Mandy was taking down her frizzles, but she stopped and gave Tobe some corn-bread for the chickens and some pot-licker with meat in it for Sniffie.  Can’t you come with me to see ’em now, Rose Mary?  It won’t be any fun until you see em!” The General had by this time lined up in the doorway with Uncle Tucker, and Tobe’s black head and keen face peered over his shoulder.  The expression in all three pairs of eyes fixed on hers was the same—­the wild desire to make her presentation at the interesting court Dame Nature was holding in the barn.  A most natural masculine instinct for feminine interpretive companionship when face to face with the miracle of maternity.