“What did the Honorable Gid want?” asked Everett, and there was a strange excitement in his eyes as he laid his hand quickly on a small, irregular bundle of stones that bulged out of his kit.  His voice had a sharp ring in it as he asked his question.

“Oh, I think he just wanted to see you because he likes you,” answered Rose Mary with one of her lifted glances and quick smiles.  “A body can take their own liking for two other people and use it as a good strong rope just to pull them together sometimes.  I’m awfully fond of Mr. Newsome—­and you,” she added as she came over from one of the crocks with Peter Rucker’s blue cup brimming with ice cold cream in her hand and offered it to Everett.

Instead of taking the cup from her Everett clasped his fingers around her slender wrist in the fashion of young Petie and thus with her hand raised the cup to his lips.  And as his eyes looked down over its blue rim into hers the excitement in them died down, first into a very deep tenderness that changed slowly into a quiet determination which seemed to be pouring a promise and a vow into her very soul.  Something in the strange look made Rose Mary’s hand tremble as he finished the last drop in the cup, and again her lovely, always-ready rose flushed up under her long lowered lashes.  “Is it good and cold?” she asked with a little smile as she turned away with the cup.

“Yes,” answered Everett quietly, “it’s all to the good and the milk to the cold.”

“Is that a compliment to me and the milk, too?” laughed Rose Mary from over by the table as she again took up her butter-paddle.  “It’s nice to find things as is expected of them, women good and milk cold, isn’t it?” she queried teasingly.

“Yes,” answered Everett from across the table.

“And any way a woman must be a comfort to folks, just as a rose must smell sweet, because they’re both born for that,” continued Rose Mary as she lifted a huge pat of the butter on to a blue saucer.  “Men are sometimes a comfort, too—­and sweet,” she added with a roguish glance at him over the butter flower she was making.

“No, Rose Mary, men are just thorns, cruel and slashing—­but sometimes they protect the rose,” answered Everett in his most cynical tone of voice, though the excitement again flamed up in his dark eyes and again his hand closed over the kit at his side.  “Do you know what I think I’ll do?” he added.  “I think I’ll take old Gray and jog over to Boliver for a while.  I’ll see the Senator, and I want to get a wire through to the firm in New York if I can.  I’ll eat both the dinner and supper you have saved when I come back, though it may be late before I get my telegram.  Will you be still awake, do you think?”

“I may not be awake, for Stonie got me up so awfully early to help him and Uncle Tucker grease those foolish little turkeys’ heads to keep off the dew gaps, but I’ll go to sleep on the settee in the hall, and you can just shake me up to give you your supper.”