“I’ll do nothing of the kind, you foolish child,” answered Everett.  “Go to bed and—­but a woman can’t manage her dreams, can she?”

“Oh, dreams are only little day thoughts that get out of the coop and run around lost in the dark,” answered Rose Mary, with a laugh.  “I’ve got a little bronze-top turkey dream that is yours,” she added.

“Is it one of the foolish flock?” Everett called back from the middle of the plank across the spring stream, and without waiting for his answer he strode down the Road.

And the smile that answered his sally had scarcely faded off Rose Mary’s face when again a shadow fell across the plank and in a moment Mr. Crabtree stood in the doorway.  Across the way the store was deserted and from the chair he drew just outside the door he could see if any shoppers should approach from either direction.

“Well, Miss Rose Mary, I thought as how I’d drop over and see if you had any buttermilk left in that trough you are fattening Mr. Mark at, for the fair in the fall,” he said with a twinkle in his merry little blue eyes.  And Rose Mary laughed with appreciation at his often repeated little joke as she handed him a tall glassful of the desired beverage.

“I’m afraid Stonie will get the blue ribbon from over his head if he keeps on drinking so much milk.  Did you ever see anybody grow like my boy does?” asked Rose Mary with the most manifest pride in her voice and eyes.

“I never did,” answered Mr. Crabtree heartily.  “And that jest reminds me to tell you that a letter come from Todd last night a-telling me and Granny Satterwhite about the third girl baby borned out to his house in Colorado City.  Looked like they was much disappointed.  I kinder give Todd a punch in the ribs about how fine a boy General Stonewall Jackson have grown to be.  I never did hold with a woman a-giving away her child, though she couldn’t have done the part you do by Stonie by a long sight.”

“Oh, what would I have done without Stonie, Mr. Crabtree!” exclaimed Rose Mary with a deep sadness coming into her lovely eyes.  “You know how it was!” she added softly, claiming his sympathy with a little gesture of her hand.

“Yes, I do know,” answered the store-keeper, his big heart giving instant response to the little cry.  “And on him you’ve done given a lesson in child raising to the whole of Sweetbriar.  They ain’t a child on the Road, girl or boy, that ain’t being sorter patterned after the General by they mothers.  And the way the women are set on him is plumb funny.  Now Mis’ Plunkett there, she’s got a little tin bucket jest to hold cakes for nobody but Stonie Jackson, which he distributes to the rest, fair and impartial.  I kinder wisht Mis’ Plunkett would be a little more free with—­with—­” And the infatuated old bachelor laughed sheepishly at Rose Mary across her butter-bowl.

“When a woman bakes little crisp cakes of affection in her heart, and the man she wants to have ask her for them don’t, what must she do?” asked Rose Mary with a little laugh that nevertheless held a slight note of genuine inquiry in it.