Again that strange sense of some wonderful eternal good came to me and I found myself humming Billy’s little “soul to keep” prayer against the doctor’s sleeve to the tune of that magic waltz.  I had never danced with him before, of course, but I felt as if I had been doing it always, and I melted in his arms as that baby had wilted to his mother out in the cabin a few hours earlier and I don’t see how such happiness as that could stop.  But with a soft entreating wail the music came to an end and there the doctor was, smiling down into my face with his whimsical friendly smile that woke me up all over.

“Somebody has stolen a rose from the Carter garden and brought it to the dance,” he said with a laugh that was for me alone.

“No,” I flashed back, “a string-bean.”  And with that I danced off again with the judge, while the doctor disappeared through the door, and I heard the chuck of his car as it whirled away.  He had just stopped in for a second to see the fun and God had given me that gipsy waltz with him, because He knew I needed something like that in my life to keep for always.

This has been a happy night, in which I betrothed myself to Alfred, though he doesn’t know it yet.  I am going to take it as a sign that life for us is going to be brilliant and gay and full of laughter and love.

I haven’t had Billy in my arms to-day and I don’t know how I shall ever get myself to sleep if I let myself think about it.  His sleep-place on my breast aches.  It is a comfort to think that the great big God understands the women folk that He makes, even if they don’t understand themselves.

LEAF SIXTH

THE RESURRECTION RAZOO

Most parties are just bunches of selfish people who go off in the corners and have good times all by themselves, but in Hillsboro, Tennessee, it is not that way.  Everybody that is not invited helps the hostess get ready and have nice things for the others, and sometimes I think they really have the best time of all.

This morning Aunt Bettie came up my front steps before breakfast with a large basketful of things for my dinner and I wondered what I would have collected to be served to those people by the time all my neighbors had made their prize contributions.  It took Aunt Bettie and Judy a half-hour to unpack her things and set them in the refrigerator and on the pantry shelves.  One was a plump fruit-cake that had been keeping company in a tight box with a sponge soaked in sherry for ever since New Year’s.  It was ripe, or smelled so.  It made me gnaw under my belt.

A little later Judy was exclaiming over a two-year-old ham that had been simmered in port and larded with egg dressing, when Mrs. Johnson came in and began to unpack her basket, which was mostly bottles of things she said she used to “stick” food.  The ginger-colored barber got the run of them before the dinner was over and got badly stuck, so Judy says.  That’s what made him make the mistake.