“Now, honey sweet, you know better than that,” answered Rose Mary as she rose from weighting down the end of a frilled white petticoat with a huge clod of earth and stretched it so as to cover quite two yards of the green shoots.  “I haven’t taken a thing of yours but two shirts and one of your last summer seersucker coats.  I’m going to mend the split up the back in it for the wash Monday.  Aunt Amandy lent me two aprons and a sack and a petticoat for the peony bushes, and Aunt Viney gave me this shawl and three chemises that cover all the pinks.  I’ve taken all the tablecloths for the early peas, and Stonie’s shirts, each one of them, have covered a whole lot of the poet’s narcissus.  All the rest of the things are my own clothes, and I’ve still got a clean dress for to-morrow.  If I can just cover everything to-night, I won’t be afraid of the frost any more.  You don’t want all the lovely little green things to die, do you, and not have any snaps or peas or peonies at all?”

“Oh, fly-away!” answered Uncle Tucker as he tucked in the last end of a nondescript frill over a group of tiny cabbage plants, “there’s not even a smack of frost in the air!  It’s all in your mind.”

“Well, a mind ought to be sensitive about covering up its friends from frost hurts,” answered Rose Mary propitiatingly as she took a satisfied survey of the bedded garden, which looked like the scene of a disorganized washday.  “Thank you, Uncle Tucker, for helping me—­keep off the frost from my dreams, anyway.  Don’t you think—­”

“Well, howdy, folks!” came a cheerfully interruptive hail from across the brick wall that separated the garden from the cinder walk that lay along Providence Road, which ran as the only street through Sweetbriar, and Caleb Rucker’s long face presented itself framed in a wreath of budding rose briars that topped the wall in their spring growth.  “Tenting up the garden sass ag’in, Miss Rose Mary?”

“No, we’re jest giving all the household duds a mooning instead of a sunning, Cal,” answered Uncle Tucker with a chuckle as he came over to the wall beside the visitor.  “What’s the word along the Road?”

“Gid Newsome have sent the news as he’ll be here Sad’ay night to lay off and plow up this here dram or no-dram question for Sweetbriar voters, so as to tote our will up to the state house for us next election.  As a state senator, we can depend on Gid to expend some and have notice taken of this district, if for nothing but his corn-silk voice and white weskit.  It must take no less’n a pound of taller a week to keep them shoes and top hat of his’n so slick.  I should jedge his courting to be kinder like soft soap and molasses, Miss Rose Mary.”  And Mr. Rucker’s smile was of the saddest as he handed this bit of gentle banter over the wall to Rose Mary, who had come over to stand beside Uncle Tucker in the end of the long path.

“It’s wonderful how devoted Mr. Newsome is to all his friends,” answered Rose Mary with a blush.  “He sent me three copies of the Bolivar Herald with the poem of yours he had them print last week, and I was just going over to take you and Mrs. Rucker one as soon as I got the time to—­”