“Oh, but honey-sweet, let me tell you, let me tell you!” exclaimed Rose Mary with shining eyes, “I’ve got just lots of money, more than twenty dollars, nearly twice more.  I’ve saved it just in case we did need it for this or—­or—­or any other thing,” she added hastily, not willing to disclose her tooth project even to Uncle Tucker’s sympathetic ear.

Uncle Tucker’s large eyes brightened with relief for a second and then clouded with a mist of tears.

“What were you saving it for, child?” he asked with a quaver in his sweet old voice, and his hand clasped hers more closely.  “You don’t ever have what pretty women like you want and need, and that’s what grinds down on me most hardest of all.  You are young and—­and mighty beautiful, and looks like it’s wrong for you to lay down yourself for us who are a good long way on the other side of life’s ridge.  I ought to send you back across the hills to—­to find your own—­no matter what happens!”

“Try it!” answered Rose Mary, again lifting her star eyes to his.  “I was saving that money to buy Aunt Viney a set of teeth that she thinks she wants, but I know she couldn’t use them when she gets them.  If I’m as beautiful as you say, isn’t this blue homespun of great Grandmother Alloways, made over twentieth century style, adornment enough?  Some people—­that is, some one—­Mr. Mark said this morning it was—­was chic, which means most awfully stylish.  I’ve got one for my back and one for the tub all out of the same old blue bed-spread, and a white linen marvel contrived from a pair of sheets for Sunday.  Please don’t send me out into the big world—­other people might not think me as lovely as you do,” and her raillery was most beautifully dauntless.

“The Lord bless you and keep you and make the sun to shine upon you, flower of His own Kingdom,” answered Uncle Tucker with a comforted smile breaking over his wistful old face.  “I had mighty high dreams about you when that young man talked his oil-wells to me a month ago, and I wanted my rose to do some of her flowering for the world to see, but maybe—­maybe—­”

“She’ll flower best here, where her roots go down into Sweetbriar hearts—­and Sweetbriar prayers, Uncle Tucker; she knows that’s true, and so do you,” answered Rose Mary quickly.  “And anyway, Mr. Mark is making the soil survey for you, and if we follow his directions there is no telling what we will make next year, maybe the interest and some of the money, too, and the teeth and—­and a sky-blue silk robe for me—­if that’s what you’d like to see me wear, though it would be inconvenient with the milking and the butter and—­”

“Tucker, oh Brother Tucker!” came a call across the garden fence from the house, in a weak but commanding voice, and Rose Mary caught a glimpse of Miss Lavinia’s white mob cap bobbing at the end of the porch, “that is in Proverbs tenth and nineteenth, and not nineteenth and tenth, like you said.  You come right in here and get it straight in your head before the next sun sets on your ignorance.”