“And you saved my supper for me?” asked Everett softly.

“Of course I did; didn’t you know I would?” asked Rose Mary quickly, in her simplicity of heart not at all catching the subtle drift of his question.  “They all missed you, and Uncle Tucker went to bed almost grumpy, while Stonie—­”

“Rose Mamie,” came in a sleepy but determined voice as the General in a long-tailed nightshirt appeared in the dark doorway, “I went to sleep and you never came back to hear me pray.  Something woke me; maybe the puppy in my bed or maybe God.  I’ll come out there and say ’em so you won’t wake the puppy, because he’s goned back to sleep,” he added in a voice that was hushed to a tone of extreme consideration for the slumber of his young bedfellow.

“Yes, honey-heart, come say them here.  Mr. Mark won’t mind.  I came back, Stonie, to hear them, truly I did, but you were so fast to sleep and so tired I hated to wake you.”  And Rose Mary held out tender arms to the little chap who came and knelt on the floor at her side, between her and Everett.

“But, Rose Mamie, you know Aunt Viney says tired ain’t no ’scuse to the Lord, and I don’t think it are neither.  I reckon He’s tired, too, sometimes, but He don’t go back on the listening, and I ain’t a-going to go back on the praying.  It wouldn’t be fair.  Now start me!” and having in a completely argumentative way stated his feelings on the subject of neglected prayer, the General buried his head on Rose Mary’s shoulder, folded one bare, pink foot across the other, clasped his hands at proper angle and waited.

“Now I lay me,” began Rose Mary in a low and tender tone.

“No,” remonstrated Stonie in a smothered voice from her shoulder, “this is ‘Our Father’ week!  Don’t tire out the Lord with the ’Now I lay me,’ Rose Mamie!”

With an exclamation of regret Rose Mary clasped him closer and led the petition on through to its last word, though it was with difficulty that the sleepy General reached his Amen, his will being strong but his flesh weak.  The little black head burrowed under Rose Mary’s chin and the clasped pink feet relaxed before the final words were said.  For a few minutes Rose Mary held him tenderly and buried her face against the back of the sunburned little neck, while as helpless as young Tucker Stonie wilted upon her breast and floated off into the depths.  And for still a few seconds longer Everett sat very still and watched them with a curious gleam in his eyes and his teeth set hard in his cigar; then he rose, bent over and very tenderly lifted the relaxed General in his arms and without a word strode into the house with him.  Very carefully he laid him in the little cot that stood beside Rose Mary’s bed in her room down the hall, and with equal care he settled the little dog against the bare, briar-scratched feet, returned to the moonlight porch and resumed his seat at Rose Mary’s side.

“There is something about the General,” he remarked with a half smile, “that—­that gets next.  He has a moral fiber that I hope he will be able to keep resistent to its present extent, but I doubt it.”