“Uncle Cradd will bring his letter when he comes back from the post-office, and I know he’ll send a message to you, Mr. G. Bird,” I said happily, as I watered and fed and caressed and joyed in the entire barn family.  “I hate him for being what he is and treating me this way, but I love him still more,” I confided to Mrs. Ewe as I gave her an extra handful of wheat out of the blouse-pocket which I kept filled for Mr. G. Bird from pure partiality.

Uncle Cradd did not bring a letter from the post-office for me.  The blow in the apple orchard and the purple plumes on the lilac bushes looked less brilliant in hue, but the tune on my heartstrings kept up a note of pure bravado.  I weeded the garden all afternoon, but stopped early, fed early, and went up-stairs to my room before the last sunset glow had faded off the dormer windows.  Opening my old mahogany chest, I took out a bundle I had made up the day after the advent of Mother Cow and the calf, spread it out on the bed, and looked it over.

In it was an incredible amount of lingerie, made of crepe de chine and lace, folded tightly and tied with a ribbon into a package not over a foot square.  A comb and a brush of old ivory, which had set in its back a small mirror held in by a silver band, which father had purchased in Florence for me under a museum guaranty as a genuine Cellini work of art, were wrapped in a silk case, and a toothbrush and soap had occupied their respective oil-silk cases along with a tube of tooth paste and one of cold cream.  Two pairs of soft, but strong, tan cotton stockings were tucked underneath the ribbon confining the lingerie, and a small prayer-book with both mine and my mother’s name in it completed the—­I hadn’t exactly liked to call it a trousseau.  It was all tied up in one of Adam’s Romney handkerchiefs, which he had washed out one day in the spring branch and left hanging on a hickory sapling to dry, and which I had appropriated because I loved its riot of faded colors.

“It is just about the size of his,” I had said to myself as I had tied up its corners that day after my love adventure in the orchard under the chaperonage of Mother Cow, and I had laughed as I imagined Pan’s face when he discovered that I had been so entirely unfemininely subservient to his command about light traveling.  Suddenly I swept the bundle together and back in the chest, while a note of genuine fear swept into the song in my heart.

“He’ll write from New Orleans—­he doesn’t sail until to-morrow,” I whispered as I quieted the discord and went down to prayers.

    “I shall not want. 
      He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: 
        he leadeth me beside the still waters. 
      He restoreth my soul:” 

intoned Uncle Cradd, and somehow the tumult in my heart was stilled for the night, and I could as usual take Pan into my prayer arms and ask God to keep him safe.  I wonder how many women would really pray if there weren’t men in the world to furnish them the theme!