Everett had just raised the glass Rose Mary had handed him, to his lips, as Mrs. Rucker spoke, and over its edge he regarded the roses that suddenly blushed out in her cheeks, but she refused to raise her lashes the fraction of an inch and went calmly on pressing the milk from the butter she had just taken from the churn.

“Granny knows that love can be sent just as well in a glass of buttermilk as in a valentine,” she finally said, and as she spoke a roguish smile coaxed at the comer of her mouth.  “Don’t you suppose a piece of hemp twine would turn into a gold cord if you tied it around a bundle of true love?” she ventured further in a spirit of daring, still with her eyes on the butter.

“Now that’s something in meaning like my first husband, Mr. Satterwhite, said when we was married,” assented Mrs. Rucker with hearty appreciation of the practicality in Rose Mary’s sentiment.  “He gave me two sows, each with a litter of pigs, for a wedding present and said they’d be a heap more to me than any kind of jimcracks he could er bought for half the money they’d bring.  And they was, for, in due course of time, I sold all them hogs and bought the plush furniture in the front room, melojeon and all.  Now Mr. Rucker, he give me a ring with a blue set and ‘darling’ printed inside it that cost fifty cents extra, and Jennie Rucker swallowed that ring before she was a year old.  I guess she has got it growed up inside her, for all I know of it, and her Paw is a-setting on Mr. Satterwhite’s furniture at present, speaking still.  Sometimes it makes me feel sad to think of Mr. Satterwhite when Cal Rucker spells out, Shall we meet beyond the river with two fingers on that melojeon.  But then I even up my feelings by remembering how Cal let me name Pete for Mr. Satterwhite, which is a second-husband compliment they don’t many men pass; and it pleased Granny so.”

“Mr. Rucker is always nice to Granny Satterwhite,” said Rose Mary with the evident intention of extolling the present incumbent of the husband office to her friend.  But at the mention of his name a moment earlier, young Peter, the bond between the past and present, had sidled out the door and proceeded to sit calmly down on the rippling surface of the spring branch.  His rescue and retirement necessitated his mother’s departure and Everett was left in command of the two-alone situation he desired.

“Hasn’t this been a lovely, long day?” asked Rose Mary as she turned the butter into a large jar and pressed a white cloth close over it with a stone top.  “To-night is the full April moon and I’ve got a surprise for you, if you don’t find it out too soon.  Will you walk over to Tilting Rock, beyond the barn-lot, with me after supper and let me show you?”

“Will I cross the fields of Elysium to gaze over the pearly ramparts?” demanded Everett with boyish enthusiasm, if not a wholly accurate use of mythological metaphor.  “Let’s cut supper and go on now!  What do you say?  Why wait?”