“I ain’t got but six more yards of gingham to sew up for the two littlest,” Mrs. Spain called cheerily as she looked past a whirring sewing-machine out through a window that was wreathed with a cinnamon rose-vine in full bloom.

“Want any help?” I called from the gate, which was flanked on both sides by blooming lilacs.

“No; you go on down to the store.  Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste.  Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed.  I do love gay colors, and it’ll go with my pink foulard.”

The scenes into which I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy in form, but serious in interpretation.  The counter was piled high with men’s garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the dyers’ vats.  Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling, embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls.  Before her stood Bud, attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using him hard as a dummy upon which to illustrate her vigorous and persuasive remarks.

“Now, I am glad you have come down, honeybunch,” she exclaimed at sight of me.  “Here’s a bale of clothes and a bale of men, and nobody can seem to match ’em up suitable.  I have at last got Bud Beesley here into a dead match for his beauty, if I do say it of my own son.  Just look at him!” As she spoke she stood off from him and folded her plump hands across her wide waist in motherly rapture.

And Bud, with his violet eyes and yellow shock, was beautiful in the “custom-made,” fifteen-dollar gray cheviot, despite his red ears.  All the Harpeth Valley farmer folk have French Cavalier, English gentle, and Irish good blood in them, with mighty little else and, as in the case of Bud and Polly Corn-tassel, when clothed in garments of the world, it comes to the surface with startling effect.  Bud could have put on a gray slouch hat with either a crimson or an orange band and walked into any good Eastern college fraternity or club he might have chosen.

“Shoo, Mother,” said Bud as he turned around for my admiration, not surfeited with that of his mother.

“I only hope some town girl won’t catch him like your mother did William,” said Aunt Mary, with a laugh that ended in a little sigh that only I heard.  Somehow I will feel psychically akin to Bud and Polly.

[Illustration:  And Bud was beautiful in the “custom-made” fifteen-dollar gray cheviot with his violet eyes and yellow smock, in spite of his red ears]

“Town girls are all movie-struck and don’t want a man if a butter-paddle goes along with him,” said Bud, with a laugh that was echoed from the overalled group.

“Yes, but Miss Nancy here has outsold any woman in Riverfield for cash on eggs and chickens before May first,” said Mr. Spain as he picked up a gray purple coat from the top of the pile on the counter.