“Now, Amandy, stick them jack-beans in the ground round side upwards.  Do you want ’em to have to turn over to sprout?” demanded Miss Lavinia, as she stood leaning on her crotched stick over by the south side of the garden fence, directing the planting of her favorite vine that was to be trained along the pickets and over the gate.  Little Miss Amanda, as usual, was doing her best to carry out exactly the behests of her older and a little more infirm sister.  Miss Amanda was possessed of a certain amount of tottering nimbleness which she put at the disposal of Miss Lavinia at all times with the most cheery good-will.  Miss Amanda was of the order of little sisters who serve and Miss Lavinia belonged to the sisterhood dominant by nature and by the consent of Miss Amanda and the rest of her family.

“It’s such a long row I don’t know as I’ll hold out to finish it, Sister Viney, if I have to stop to finger the beans in such a way as that.  But I’ll try,” answered the little worker, going on sticking the beans in with trembling haste.

“Let me help you, please, Miss Amanda,” entreated Everett, who had come out to watch the bean planting with the intention of offering aid, with also the certainty of having it refused.

“No, young man,” answered Miss Lavinia promptly and decidedly.  “These jack beans must be set in by a hand that knows ’em.  We can’t run no risks of having ’em to fail to come up.  I got the seed of ’em over to Springfield when me and Mr. Robards was stationed there just before the war.  Mr. Robards was always fond of flowers, and these jack beans in special.  He was such a proper meek man and showed so few likings that I feel like I oughter honor this one by growing these vines in plenty as a remembrance, even if he has been dead forty-odd years.”

“Was your husband a minister?” asked Everett in a voice of becoming respect to the meek Mr. Robards, though he be demised for nearly half a century.

“He was that, and a proper, saddlebags-riding, torment-preaching circuit rider before he was made presiding elder at an astonishing early age,” answered Miss Lavinia, a fading fire blazing up in her dark eyes.  “He saved many a sinner in Harpeth Valley by preaching both heaven and hell in their fitten places, what’s a thing this younger generation don’t know how to do any more, it seems like.  A sermon that sets up heaven like a circus tent, with a come-sinner-come-all sign, and digs hell no deeper than Mill Creek swimming pool, as is skeercely over a boy’s middle, ain’t no sermon at all to my mind.  Most preaching in Sweetbriar are like that nowadays.”

“But Brother Robards had a mighty sweet voice and he gave the call of God’s love so as to draw answers from all hearts,” said Miss Amanda in her own sweet little voice, as she jabbed in the beans with her right hand and drew the dirt over them with her left.

“Yes, husband was a little inclined to preach from Psalms more’n good rousing Proverbs, but I always belt him to the main meat of the Gospel and only let him feed the flock on the sweets of faith in proper proportion,” answered Miss Lavinia, with an echo in her voice of the energy expended in keeping the presiding elder to a Jeremiah rather than a David role in his ministry.