But just here we were interrupted by a clatter and a clash of hoofs, a wild shout in Peter’s voice, and a cheer in the fledgling’s high treble.  The biggest mule lurched up to the gate, and two figures took a flying leap from his back to the pavement.  With a rush they swept up the path and brought up panting at the bottom of our steps.

“Peter!” I gasped, descending to be sure that neither of them was bodily broken or demented.

“It’s across! it’s across!” shouted Peter as he reached out his arms and grabbed me in a wild embrace.

“What?” Sam and I both demanded, though, of course, in a way we knew.

“The play!” exclaimed Peter, putting his head down on my shoulder and fairly sobbing out his relief.  “Farrington is going to begin rehearsals from the first two acts I’ve sent him, and I am to go right on to New York with the third that I finished an hour before the wire came over from the cross-roads station.  You’ll go with me, won’t you, Betty?  I can’t go without you and Sam.”  And as he hugged me close Peter reached out and grasped Sam’s big hand that rested on his arm.

“Of course Betty will go, and I’ll come as soon as I get the whole crop in,” answered Sam in his deep, kind, strong voice that steadied all our nerves.  “I knew you’d make it, Pete.  I never doubted that all you needed was a bit of brawn to punch from.”

“Peter—­Sam!” I gasped, trying to get my balance as I felt as if I were being hurried through space without even being told where to.  “I don’t know.  I—­”

“I can’t do without you, Betty,” Peter said again, as he held me close and Sam withdrew from us for the distance of about two steps.

“Betty is the real thing, Pete, and she’ll stand by when you need her.  She always does,” Sam said, in a quiet voice that sank down into the depths of my soul and made a cold spot.

“I—­I—­don’t know.  I—­” I was just reiterating when daddy and Julia, with a plate of something, came through the gate and up the walk.  They had to be told, and they had to congratulate, and then mother came out to see what it was all about.  They were all happy and gloriously excited, and I was dead—­dead.

Then Sam took Peter home because he had to pack and get into town for the morning train.  I begged for the fledgling to be left with me, and Sam consented without even mentioning the string-beans to be picked or the weeds in the parsnips.  He said good night to everybody before he did to me, and then started to go with just the farewell word, hesitated a second, and came back and roughed my hair down over my eyes with the greatest roughness he had ever employed in that action.  It would have broken my heart if he hadn’t.

“Betty,” said the Byrd, as he crouched at my side with his thin, scantily clad little body hovered against my skirts, “you ain’t going to no New York with Pete and leave me and Sam and all the poor little ones, is you?”