“Lord bless your soul, honey! she has been dead these three years!  Why, you forget cows don’t hang on as long as Methuselah, and Brindle was no yearling when we took her.  She mired down in the swamp, back of the millpond, and before we could find her she was dead.  But her calf is as pretty a young thing as ever you saw; speckled all over, most as thick as a guinea, and the children call her ‘Speckle.’  Willis, step out and see if the heifer is in sight.  Edna, a’n’t you going to stay with me to-night?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Wood, I should like very much to do so, but have not time, and must get back to Chattanooga before the train leaves, for I am obliged to go on to-night.”

“Well, any how, lay off your bonnet and stay and let me give you some supper, and then we will all go back with you, that is, if you a’n’t too proud to ride to town in our cart?  We have got a new cart, but it is only a miller’s cart, and may be it won’t suit your fine fashionable clothes.”

“I shall be very glad to stay, and I only wish it was the same old cart that took me to the depot, more than five years ago.  Please give me some water.”

Mrs. Wood rolled up her sleeves, put away her pretty peppers, and talking vigorously all the time, prepared some refreshments for her guest.

A table was set under the apple-tree, a snowy cotton cloth spread over it, and yellow butter, tempting as Goshen’s, and a loaf of fresh bread, and honey amber-hued, and buttermilk, and cider, and stewed pears, and a dish of ripe red apples crowned the board.

The air was laden with the fragrance it stole in crossing a hayfield beyond the road, the bees darted in and out of their hives, and a peacock spread his iridescent feathers to catch the level yellow rays of the setting sun, and from the distant millpond came the gabble of geese, as the noisy fleet breasted the ripples.

Speckle, who had been driven to the gate for Edna’s inspection, stood close to the paling, thrusting her pearly horns through the cracks, and watching the party at the table with her large, liquid, beautiful, earnest eyes; and afar off Lookout rose solemn and sombre.

“Edna, you eat nothing.  What ails you, child!  They say too much brainwork is not healthy, and I reckon you study too hard.  Better stay here with me, honey, and run around the woods and get some red in your face, and churn and spin and drink buttermilk, and get plump, and go chestnutting with my children.  Goodness knows they are strong enough and hearty enough, and too much study will never make shads of them:  for they won’t work their brains, even to learn the multiplication table.  See here, Edna, if you will stay a while with me, I will give Speckle to you.”

“Thank you, dear Mrs. Wood, I wish I could; but the lady who engaged me to teach her children, wrote that I was very much needed; and, consequently, I must hurry on.  Speckle is a perfect little beauty, but I would not be so selfish as to take her away from you.”