“The Nashville and Louisville papers all wrote up the way Clyde Tolbot swam Salt River and stopped the L. & N. express from going down in the cut during the storm last year,” Edith hastened to say when Mrs. Folk’s breath had given out.  Tolly’s ugly good face was beautiful to see when she spoke of him thus, though Edith didn’t notice it.

When you start a Harpeth Valley town to telling how wonderful it is to the third and fourth generation back, it is like a seething torrent and can go on for ever.  I glowed to think of all the wonderful things I could write Peter, and we all started home from the post-office as late as supper hour would admit.

After I got home, escorted by the reunited Edith and Tolly, as well as by Billy Robertson, who wants to be Peter’s hero, though he wasn’t directly saying so, I sat down determinedly to write to Peter at inspiring length and make him feel how I valued his confidence in me, also to mention the war drama.  Just then I raised my eyes and that wonderful notebook had pushed a corner of itself out of the desk from under the manuscript.  I couldn’t use my mind advising between a modern epic and a war drama while it was plowed up ready for peonies, so I decided to wait and ask Sam’s advice about advising Peter, and I read the rest of the peony pages in comfort.  Right then, too, I made up my mind that I was going to get ground bone to plant at the roots of all the peonies if I had to use my own skeleton to do it and would only see them bloom with astral eyes.

I was still reading when the supper-bell rang, and was only interested in reminiscences of Grandmother Nelson during the meal.

“No, ma’am, Miss Caroline, you got it wrong.  Ole Mis’ didn’t divide clover pinks ’cepting every third year ’stid of second. Hers bloomed, they did,” Eph interrupted mother to say, indulging in perhaps his first speech while waiting on the table during the long and honorable life as a butler which that grandmother had started at his sixth year.  He then retired in the blackest consternation, and his yellow granddaughter, the house-girl, brought in the wine-jelly.

One thing is certain—­I must contrive some way to get Sam back and forth to me from The Briers in less time than it takes him to walk five miles.  He has got just one old roan plow mare and he won’t ride her after he has worked her all day, and I am afraid it won’t do for me to go after him with Redwheels every time I want him.  I can go about two-thirds of the time, but he must be allowed some liberty about expressing his desire for my company.  Of course a tactful woman can go nine-tenths of the way in all things to meet a man she likes, and he’ll think she hasn’t even started from home; but she ought to be honorable enough not to do it at that rate.  I believe in liberty for men as well as women.