And added to her full heart had been burdens that had made her hands still fuller.  She had gone on her way day by day pouring out the richness of her life and strength where it was so sorely needed by her feeble folk, with a song in her heart for him and them and to answer every call from along Providence Road.  Thus it is that the motive power for the great cycles that turn and turn out in the wide spaces between time and eternity, regardless of the wheels of men that whirl and buzz on broken cog with shattered rim, is poured through the natures of women of such a mold for the saving of His nations.

At last Rose Mary folded her letter, hesitated, and with a glint of the blue in her eyes as her lashes fell over a still rosier hint in her cheeks, she tucked it into the front of her dress and smoothed and patted the folds of her apron close down over it, then turned with praiseworthy energy to the huge bowl of unworked butter.

And it was nearly an hour later, still, that the Honorable Gid loomed in the doorway under the honeysuckle vines, a complacent smile arranged on his huge face and gallantry oozing from every gesture and pose.

“Why, Mr. Newsome, when did you come?  How are you, and I’m glad to see you!” exclaimed Rose Mary all in one hospitable breath as she beamed at the Senator across her table with the most affable friendship.  Rose Mary felt in a beaming mood, and the Honorable Gid came under the shower of her affability.

“Do have that chair by the door, and let me give you a glass of milk,” she hastened to add as she took up a cup and started for the crocks with a still greater accession of hospitality.  “Sweet or buttermilk?” she paused to inquire over her shoulder.

“Either handed by you would be sweet” answered the Senator with praiseworthy ponderosity, and he shook out the smile veil until the very roots of his hair became agitated.

“Yes, Mr. Rucker says my buttermilk tastes like sweet milk with honey added,” laughed Rose Mary, dimpling from over the tall jar.  “He says that because I always pour cream into it for him, and Mrs. Rucker won’t because she says it is extravagant.  But I think a poet ought to have a dash of cream in his life, if just to make the poetry run smoother—­and orators, too,” she added as she poured half a ladleful of the golden top milk into the foaming glass in her hand and gave it to the Senator, who received it with a trembling hand and gulped it down desperately; for this once in his life the Honorable Gideon Newsome was completely and entirely embarrassed.  For many a year he had had at his command florid and extravagant figures of speech which, cast in any one of a dozen of his dulcet modulations of voice, were warranted to tell on even the most stubborn masculine intelligence, and ought to have melted the feminine heart at the moment of utterance, but at this particular moment they all failed him, and he was left high and dry on the coast of courtship with only the bare question available for use.