I am glad that I had that care-free day of hard work with Sam out at The Briers to fatigue me so that I couldn’t take Peter’s letter completely to heart.  I read it, cried over it a minute, and then fell into my bed without even putting rose oil on my cheek curls to hold them in place.  My first day at farming had done me up.  Still, it’s no use to cover up your head from trouble; it’s right here by the bed the minute you peep over the top of the sheet.  I woke up, feeling that the whole world must be camping on the top of my crocheted lace counterpane; but soon I realized that it was only Peter’s play.  Peter is stuck in the mud at the beginning of the third act, and he thinks it is quicksands that are going to drown him.  The last few sentences of the letter sound like a beautiful funeral oration to himself, and they made me so miserable that I put on my clothes and fled to daddy, who was out smoking his cigar on the front porch in the crisp morning air.

“And Sam can’t possibly get ready for him to come down in less than two weeks.  He has to build the house in between the plowing and milking and other things.  Peter may die.  What shall we do?” I wound up with a wail.

“Sam paid off the note on two of the cows and cash for the mule last Monday,” answered daddy.  “Not a farmer in the Harpeth Valley has done better in less than two years, and I would leave Peter to him.  I guess he can fodder up the play, too.  Have the poet down to visit mother while he waits.”

“He can’t come for a week; he’s going to be decorated at the Academy.  He’s the youngest that ever has been; but I’ll write and ask him,” I answered, in a jumble, but very much comforted.

Peter accepted my invitation and announced his arrival as ten days later.  Then real work began among Sam’s friends and mine in Hayesboro.

I put the case to them plainly and movingly.  Here was a young and distinguished genius coming to settle down in Hayesboro to rescue his play, and it was the duty of everybody to help him in every way.  The first thing he had to have was shelter, and we ought to all help Sam as much as we could to provide it for him.  He was willing to stay with us for a few days, on mother’s invitation, which I had to hide nine crochet-needles to make her write him, but he wrote that his “spirit panted for the wilderness,” and if he felt that way about it he ought to be settled in the cabin as soon as possible.

“Why, of course,” said Julia, with large and responsive enthusiasm, “we must just all turn in and help Sam.  I never helped build a house, but if you can, Betty, so can I.”

“I can make curtains and things and cushions for chairs,” said Edith, with no less enthusiasm than Julia’s.  “I have a lovely bureau-scarf all finished and—­”

“Chairs—­bureau!” I fairly gasped.  “Neither Sam nor I had thought of furniture.  Sam paid a big note in the bank for the cows and mule, and how can he buy more stock like chairs and bureaus and beds?”