I couldn’t stand any more.  I gulped the cream, remarked huskily on how warm the April night was, and escaped down the front walk to the old purple lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year I had always kept house with and for Sam whenever he would enter into the bonds of an imaginary marriage with me for an hour or two.  Sam made a good father of a hollyhock doll family whenever he undertook the relation, and provided liberally for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts.

“And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has when he is noble and poor and alone,” I sobbed into my silk sleeve, which was so thin that I shivered in the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate and looked away out at the dim blue hills that rim the Harpeth Valley, at the foot of one of which I seemed to see Sam’s and Byrd’s hollow log.

“Hello, Bettykin!  Out putting our hollyhock family to bed?” laughed a crisp, comforting, jolly voice right at my elbow as a big, rough hand ruffled my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a friendly shake to my left shoulder.  “How do you find all our children after a three-year foreign sojourn?”

“I told you five years ago, when I put it up on my head, to stop ruffing my hair, Sam Crittenden; and did you find that cow?” I answered, with both defiance and anxiety in my voice.

“I did,” answered Sam, cheerfully, “but how did I lose you in the shuffle?  I tied her up in the shack with a rope and then beat it in all these five miles, partly by foot and partly by a neighbor’s buggy, to find and—­er—­rope you in.  I am glad to see you are standing quietly at the bars waiting for me, and as soon as I’ve greeted your mother and Dad Hayes and got a little of the apple-float that I bet was the fatted calf they killed for your prodigal return, I’ll foot it the five miles back in a relieved and contented frame of mind.”

“How did you happen to let your cows get sick, Sam?” I demanded, sternly, instead of putting my arms around his neck to tell him how noble I had found out he was, and how glad I was that he had come all that way to see me, and not to be mad at me because I didn’t obey him out in the lane.

“I don’t know, Betty, I just don’t know,” answered Sam, as he lit a corn-cob pipe and leaned closer to me in a thoughtful manner.  “Cows are such feminine things and so contrary.  I don’t know what I will do if I lose any more.  I—­I may get discouraged.”

“Have you had a doctor?” I asked, briskly and unfeelingly, though I did take his big rough hand in my own and hold on to it with a sympathy that was not in my voice.

“No, I’ve sorter doctored them by a book I have.  The only good veterinary doctor about here lives way over by Spring Hill, and it would take him a day to drive over and back, besides costing me about ten dollars.  Still, I ought to get him.  Buttercup is pretty sick,” answered Sam, and I could see that his broad shoulders under his well-cut blue serge coat of last season seemed to sag with the weight of his animal responsibilities.