And at this very opportune moment he looked down the Road and espied a procession of presentation approaching.  The General in the midst of the Swarm was coming at a breakneck speed and clasped firmly in his arms he held a small blue bundle.  On his right galloped Tobe with Shoofly swung at her usual dangerous angle on his hip, and Jennie Rucker supported his left wing, with stumbling Petie pulled along between her hand and that of small Peggy.  Around and behind swarmed the rest of the Poteet seven, the Ruckers and the Nickols, with Mrs. Sniffer and the five little dogs bringing up the rear.

“Well, well, and what have we here?” exclaimed the great man as he descended and stood in front of the lined-up cohorts.

“It’s the Poteet baby,” answered the General with precision.  “We bringed him to show you.  He’s going to be a boy; they can’t nothing change him now.  Shoofly is a girl, but Mis’ Poteet didn’t fool us this time.  Besides if he’d been a girl we wouldn’t a-had him for nothing.”

“Why, young man, you don’t mean to discredit the girls, do you?” demanded the Senator with a gallantly propitiating glance in the direction of Jennie, Peggy and the rest of the bunch of assorted pink and blue little calico petticoats.  “Why could anything be finer than a sweet little girl?” And as he spoke he rested his hand on Jennie’s tow-pigtailed head.

“Well, what’s sweet got to do with it if we’ve got too many of ’em?” answered the General in his usual argumentative tone.  “Till little Tucker comed they was three more girls than they was boys, and it wasn’t fair.  Now they is just two more, and four of Sniffie’s puppies is boys, so that makes it most even until another one comes, what’ll just have to be a boy.”  And the General cast a threatening glance in the direction of the calico bunch as he issued this ultimatum to feminine Sweetbriar.

“I’ll ask Maw,” murmured Jennie bashfully, but Miss Peggy turned up her small nose and switched her short skirts scornfully as the men on the porch laughed and the Senator emitted a very roar in his booming bass.

“Well, well, we’ll have to settle that later,” he said in his most propitiating urge-voter voice as he cast a smile over the entire Swarm.  “Hadn’t you better carry the young man back to his mother?  He seems to be restless,” he further remarked, taking advantage of a slight squirm in which young Tucker indulged himself, though he was not at all uncomfortable in Stonie’s arms, accustomed as he was to being transported in any direction at any time by any one of his confreres.  And with this skilful hint of dismissal the Senator bent down and bestowed the imperative political kiss on the little pink Poteet head, smattered one or two over Shoofly and Pete, landed one on the tip of Jennie Rucker’s little freckled nose and started them all up the Road in good order as he turned once more to the men in the store.

But the advent of the Swarm had served to remind the group of his friends that the time for the roof-tree gathering was fast approaching, and Mr. Crabtree was busy filling half-forgotten supper orders for impatient waiters, while most of the men had gone up or down the Road in the wake of the scattering Swarm.  For a few minutes the Senator and Everett were left on the porch steps alone.