“Mr. G. Bird,” I began as I reached this point and I saw that we were arriving in the heart of civilization, which was the square of a quaint little old town.  From a motor-car acquaintance, I knew this to be Riverfield, but I had never even stopped because of the family pride involved in the feud now dead.  “Mr. Bird,” I repeated, “I am afraid I am up against it, and I hope you’ll stand by me.”  He answered me by preening a breast feather and winking one of his bright eyes as Uncle Cradd stopped the ancient steeds in the center of the square, before a little old brick building that bore three signs over its tumble-down porch.  They were:  “Silas Beesley, Grocer,” “U.S.  Post-Office,” and “Riverfield Bank and Trust Co.”

“Hey, Si, here’s William come home!” called Uncle Cradd, as a negro boy with a broad grin stood at the heads of the slow old horses, who, I felt sure, wouldn’t have moved except under necessity before the judgment day.  In less time than I can take to tell it father descended literally into the arms of his friends.  About half a dozen old farmers, some in overalls and some in rusty black broadcloth the color of Uncle Cradd’s, poured out of the wide door of the business building before described, and they acted very much as I have seen the boys at Yale or Princeton act after a success or defeat on the foot-ball field.  They hugged father and they slapped him on the back and they shook his hand as if it were not of human, sixty-year-old flesh and blood.  Then they introduced a lot of stalwart young farmers to him, each of whom gave father hearty greetings, but refrained from even a glance in my direction as I sat enthroned on high on the faded old cushions and waited for an introduction, which at last Uncle Cradd remembered to give me.

“This is Miss Nancy Craddock, gentlemen, named after my mother, and she’s going to beat out the Bend in her chicken raising, which she’s brought along with her.  Come over, youngsters, and look her over.  The fire in the parlor don’t burn more than a half cord of wood on a Sunday, and you can come over Saturday afternoon and cut it against the Sabbath, with a welcome to any one of the spare rooms and a slab of Rufus’s spare rib and a couple of both breakfast and supper muffins.”  All of the older men laughed at this sweeping invitation, and all the younger greeted it with ears that became instantly crimson.  I verily believe they would one and all have fled and left me sitting there yet if a diversion had not arrived in the person of Mrs. Silas, who came bustling out of the door of the grocery or post-office or bank; whichever it is called, is according to your errand there.  Mrs. Si was tall, and almost as broad as the door itself, with the rosiest cheeks and the bluest eyes I had ever beheld, and they crinkled with loveliness around their corners.  She had white water-waves that escaped their decorous plastering into waving little tendril curls, and her mouth was as curled and red-lipped and dimpled as a girl’s.  In a twinkling of those blue eyes I fell out of the carriage into a pair of strong, soft, tender arms covered with stiff gray percale, and received two hearty kisses, one on each cheek.