“Cal,” said Mrs. Rucker sternly, “don’t you eat more’n half that saucer.  I’ve got no mind to top off this here good time with mustard plasters all around.  Even rejoicings can get overfed and peter out into ginger tea.  Jennie, you and Sammie and Pete stop eating right now.  Lands alive, the sun has set and we all know Miss Viney oughter be in the house.  Shoo, everybody go home to save your manners!” And with hearty laughs and further good-by congratulations the happy little company of farmer folk scattered to their own roof trees across and along Providence Road.  The twilight had come, but a very young moon was casting soft shadows from the trees rustling in the night breezes and the stars were lighting up in competition to the rays that shot out from window after window in the little village.

Uncle Tucker had hurried away to his belated barn duties and little Miss Amanda into the house to stir up Miss Lavinia’s fire in preparation for their retirement, which was a ceremony of long duration and begun with the mounting of the chickens to their roosts.  Miss Lavinia sat with her hands folded in her lap over a collection of the smaller gifts of the afternoon and her eyes looked far away cross the Ridge, dim in the failing light, while her stern old face took on softened and very lovely lines.  Rose Mary stood near to help her into the house and Everett leaned against a post close on the other side of the rocker.

“Children,” she said with a little break in her usual austere voice, “I’m kinder ashamed of accusing the Lord of forgetting me this morning when I look at all these remembers of me here that my neighbors have given me.  I found friends when I came here eighty-two years ago to-day and as they have died off He has raised up a new crop outen their seed for me.  This rheumatism buckeye here is the present of the great grandson of my first beau, and this afternoon I have looked into the kind eyes of some of my friends dead and gone many a day, and have seen smiles come to life that have been buried fifty years.  I’m a-feeling thankful to be here another summer to see my friends and flowers a-blooming onct more, and come next April I am a-going to want just such another infair as this one.  Now help me into bed!  Young man, you can lift me up some, I’m stiff with so long setting, and I’m a-going to want a power of rubbing this night, Rose Mary.”

So, thus held by her duties of ministration, it was quite an hour later that Rose Mary came out of the house, which was dark and sleep-quiet, and found Everett still sitting on the front steps smoking and—­waiting.

“Tired?” he asked as she sank down on to the step beside him and leaned her dark head back against one of the posts that supported the mass of honeysuckle vine.

“Not much—­and a heap happy,” she answered, looking up at him with reflected stars in her long-lashed blue eyes.  “Wasn’t it a lovely party?”

“Yes,” answered Everett slowly as he watched the smoke curl up from his cigar and blow in the soft little night wind across toward Rose Mary; “yes, it was a nice party.  I seriously doubt if anywhere on any of the known continents there could have been one just like it pulled off by any people of any nation.  It was unique—­in sentiment and execution; I’m duly grateful for having been a guest—­even part honoree.”