“They ain’t nothing in this world I couldn’t do to make it just the littlest mite easier for Rose Mary and them sweet old folks, even to gettin’ my house into a unseemly married condition before hand,” answered Mrs. Plunkett as she brushed a tear away from her blue eyes.

“That’s the way we all feel,” said Mrs. Rucker.  “Now if I was you I’d give Mr. Crabtree that middle bureau drawer.  Men are apt to poke things away careless if they has the top, and the bottom one is best to use for your own things.  Mr. Satterwhite always kept his clothes so it were a pleasure to look at ’em, but Cal Rucker prefers a pair of socks separated across the house if he can get them there.  I found one of his undershirts full of mud and stuck away in the kitchen safe with the cup towels last week.  There comes Mis’ Poteet to help at last!  I never heard anything yell like Tucker has been doing all morning.  Is he quiet at last, Mis’ Poteet?”

“Yes, I reckon he’s gave out all the holler that’s in him, but I’m afraid to put him down,” and Mrs. Poteet continued the joggling, swaying motion to a blue bundle on her breast that she had been administering as a continuous performance to young Tucker since daylight.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come help you all with the moving, but you can count on my mop and broom over to the store all afternoon, soon as I can turn him over to the children.”

“We ain’t needed you before, but now we have got Mr. Crabtree all settled down here with Mrs. Plunkett we can get to work on his house right after dinner.  Have you been over to the Briars to see ’em in the last hour?”

“Yes, I come by there, but they didn’t seem to need me.  Miss Viney has got Miss Amandy and Tobe and the General at work, and Rose Mary has gone down to the dairy to pack up the last batch of butter for Mr. Crabtree to take to the city in the morning.  Mr. Tucker’s still going over things in the barn, and my feelings riz so I had to come away for fear of me and little Tucker both busting out crying.”

And over at the Briars the scenes of exodus being enacted were well calculated to touch a heart sterner than that of the gentle, sympathetic and maternal Mrs. Poteet.  Chilled by the out-of-season wind Miss Lavinia had awakened with as bad a spell of rheumatism as she had had for a year and it was with the greatest difficulty that Rose Mary had succeeded in rubbing down the pain to a state where she could be propped up in bed to direct little Miss Amanda and the children in the last sad rites of getting things into shape to be carried across the road at the beginning of the morrow, which was the day Uncle Tucker had sternly set as that of his abdication.

Feebly, Miss Amanda tottered about trying to carry out her sister’s orders and patiently the General and Tobe labored to help her, though their hearts were really over at the store, where the rest of the Swarm were, in the midst of the excitement of Mr. Crabtree’s change of residence.  In all their young lives of varied length they had never before had an opportunity to witness the upheaval of a moving and this occasion was frought with a well-nigh insupportable fascination.  The General’s remaining at the post of family duty and his command of his henchman to the same sacrifice was indeed remarkable, though in a way pathetic.