things—­that the heat and friction of them and the hand combined have brought out a great patch of prickly heat right over my heart in this sizzling weather.  I know it needs fresh cold cream to make it heal up, and I haven’t even any talcum powder.  How’s Louisa Helen and doth the widow consent still not at all?  Tell Crabtree I say just walk over and try force of arms and not to—­That force of arms is a good expression to use—­literally in some cases.  Something is the matter with my arms.  They don’t feel strong like they did when I helped Uncle Tucker mow the south pasture and turn the corn chopper—­they’re weak and—­and sorter useless—­and empty.  Tell Stonie he could beat me bear-hugging any day now.  Has Tobe discovered any new adventure in aromatics lately, and can little Poteet sit up and take notice?  Help, help, I’m getting so homesick that I’m about to cry and fall into the ink!

“Good night—­with all that the expression can imply of moonlight coming over the head of old Harpeth, pouring down its sides, rippling out over the corn-fields and flooding over a tall rose girl thing who stands in the doorway with her ‘nesties’ all asleep in the dark house behind her—­and if any man were lounging against the honeysuckle vine getting a last puff out of his cigar I should know it, and a thousand miles couldn’t save him.  I’m all waked up thinking about it, and I could smash—­Good night!

M.E.

P.S.  I don’t think it at all square of you not to let Stonie sell me the little dogs.  Women ought to keep out of business affairs between men.”

And as she turned the last page, slipped it back into place and promptly began at the beginning of the very first one, Rose Mary’s face was an exquisite study in what might have been entitled pure joy.  Her roses rioted up under her lashes, her rich lips curled like the half-blown bud between the flower of her cheeks, and her eyes shone like the two first stars mirrored in a woman’s pool of life.  Also it is one of the mysteries of the drama why a woman will scan over and over pages whose every letter is chiseled inches deep into her heart; and exactly one-half hour later Rose Mary was still standing motionless by her table, with the letter outspread in her hand.

And this was a very wonderful woman Old Harpeth had cradled in the hollow of His hand, nurtured on the richness of the valley and breathed into her with ever-perfumed breath the peace of faith—­in God and man, for to any but an elemental, natural, faith-inspired woman of the fields would have come crushing, cruel, tearing doubts of the man beyond the hills who said so little and yet so much.  However, Rose Mary was one of the order of fostering women whose arms are forever outheld cradle-wise, and to whose breast is ever drawn in mother love the child in the man of her choice, so her days since Everett’s hurried departure had been filled with love and longing, with faith and prayers, but there had been not one shadow of doubt of him or his love for her all half-spoken as he had left it.