“Why, I thought Silas said you did,” she answered absent-mindedly.  “Now, you can have Bud, but not for keeps, because as I borned him I think I am entitled to work him.”  We all laughed as Bud and I betook ourselves and a large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to Elmnest.

“Miss Ann, please ma’am, make mother let me go to town to-night with Mr. Matthew and stay with Miss Bess.  All her linen chest has come, and I want to see it,” Polly Corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded.  I went back and laid the case before her mother.

“Well, I suppose it won’t hurt her if all this marriage and giving in marriage don’t get into her head.  I aim to keep and work her at least two years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back,” agreed Aunt Mary.  “When did you say the wedding was going to be?”

“June tenth,” I answered.

“I heard that Mr. Owen Murray talking to Mr. Spain about his wooded piece of land over by the big spring the other night.  Looks like you are a pot of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around you.”

“No, it’s the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part of the Harpeth Valley,” I answered as I again began to depart with Bud and the cabbage plants.

“Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden was located right here.  It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere.  Are you sure you don’t know when he’ll come back to see us all?” Aunt Mary’s blue eyes danced with merriment.

“No,” I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to herself, “Well, Silas did say—­”

All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts behind Bud’s hoe and refused even to think about Bess’s wedding-chest.  But at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed back from her—­or have a serious crisis in our friendship.  I hadn’t strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn’t, though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.

“Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here in the dark and not make me say a word?” I asked him as he brought me home in the after-midnight hush.

“You’ve trained my heart into silence, Ann,” he answered gently.

“No!” I exclaimed, for I couldn’t bear the thought of Matthew’s big heart being silent too.  Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat, fell off and had to be rescued.  We put her out at home in a wilted condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest.  An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was quiet and well.