The imagination of all true lovers is easily exercised about matters pertaining to the tender passion, and though Mr. Crabtree had never in his life received such a letter he divined instantly that it should be delivered promptly by a messenger whose mercury wings should scarcely pause in agitating the air of arrival and departure.  And suiting his actions to his instinct he whirled the envelope across the spring stream to the table by Rose Mary’s side with the aim of one of the little god’s own arrows and retreated before her greeting and invitation to enter should tempt him.

“Honey drip and women folks is sweet jest about the same and they both stick some when you’re got your full of ’em at the time,” philosophized the poet as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Say, Crabbie, don’t tell Mis’ Rucker I have come home yet, please.  I want to go out and lay down in the barn on the hay and see if I can get that ‘hair-despair’ tangle straightened out.  She hasn’t seen me to tell me things for two hours or more and I know I won’t get no thinking done this day if I don’t make the barn ’fore she spies me.”  And with furtive steps and eyes he left the store and veered in a round-about way toward the barn.

And over in the milk-house Rose Mary stood in the long shaft of golden light that came across the valley and fell through the door, it would seem, just to throw a glow over the wide sheets of closely written paper.  Rose Mary had been pale as she worked, and her deep eyes had been filled with a very gentle sadness which lighted with a flash as she opened the envelope and began to read.

“Just a line, Rose girl, before I put out the light and go on a dream hunt for you,” Everett wrote in his square black letters.  “The day has been long and I feel as if I had been drawn out still longer.  I’m tired, I’m hungry, and there’s no balm of Gilead in New York.  I can’t eat because there are no cornmeal muffins in this howling wilderness of houses, streets, people and noise.  I can’t drink because something awful rises in my throat when I see cream or buttermilk, and sassarcak doesn’t interest me any more.  I would be glad to lap out of one of your crocks with Sniffie and the wee dogs.

“And most of all I’m tired to see you.  I want to tell you how hard I am working, and that I don’t seem to be able to make some of these stupid old gold backs see things my way, even if I do show it to them covered with a haze of yellow pay dust.  But they shall—­and that’s my vow to—­

“I wish I could kneel down by your rocking-chair with Stonie and hear Uncle Tucker chant that stunt about ‘the hollow of His hand.’  Is any of that true, Rose Mamie, and are you true and is Aunt Viney as well as could be expected, considering the length of my absence?  I’ve got the little Bible book with Miss Amanda’s blush rose pressed in it, and I put my hand to my breast-pocket so often to be sure it is there and some other things—­letter