Still, I can’t express the strain it was on me to wait until after eight o’clock for Sam with Grandmother Nelson’s farm-book on my knee, and I don’t want to do it ever again, especially if the Byrd or Mammy or the cows or any of the other live stock might be sick.  I felt that it must be midnight before I got Sam seated by me on the deep old mahogany sofa in front of one nice April blaze in behind the brass fender, and under another from Tolly’s power-house.  He was pretty tired, as he had been up since daylight, but the cows were all right and on feed again, Mammy wasn’t any stiffer than usual, and he had promised the Byrd the first chicken that the old Dominicker hatched out to stay at home and let him come to see me.  Mammy had sent me five fresh eggs, and Sam presented them with a queer pod of little round black seeds, and a smile that wouldn’t look me in the face.

“Hollyhocks!  I climbed over the Johnson fence about two miles from town and stole them for you,” he said, as he squirmed around from me and picked a brown burr off the leg of his trousers.

“Aren’t they sweeties?” I exclaimed, not noticing his entirely unnecessary bashfulness.  “And that is just what I want to talk to you about.”  With which I produced my ancestral treasure, and with our heads close together we dove into it, didn’t come up until after ten o’clock, and then were breathless.

“Oh, Sam, can I do all these things out at your farm?” I exclaimed, and I fairly clung against his shoulder while his strong, rough hand folded over mine as the husk did over the hollyhock seeds I had been holding warm and moist in my palm.

“All of them, and then some, Betty,” he answered, blowing away a wisp of my hair that he had again roughed up instead of shaking hands in greeting, despite my reproof.  “I’ll plow up that southern plot for you just after daylight to-morrow, and every minute I can take from grubbing at the things I have to work to make the eats for all of us I’ll put in on the posy-garden for you.”

“I’m much obliged to you for the plowing, but I’ll be out at about nine o’clock and I’ll bring my own spade and hoe and rake and things.  I think I’ll take those two young white lilacs that are crowded over by the fence in the front yard to start the garden.  Don’t you think lilacs would be a lovely corner for a garden like my grandmother’s, Sam?”

“I—­I think it would be nice to—­plant the hollyhock seeds you have in your hand the first thing, Betty,” answered Sam, with the gridiron smolder in his eyes which snapped up into a twinkle as he added, “Could you help me set onions for a few hours later on?”

“Oh, I’d adore it!” I answered, enthusiastically.  “Of course, I mean to help plant all the eat things, too.  I may like them best.  Let’s see what grandmother says about onions.”  And I began to ruffle back the pages of the book that Sam held in both his hands for me.

“Good gracious!  Betty, couldn’t the old lady write!” exclaimed Sam, a half-hour later, after we had finished with onions and many other profitable vegetables.  “Why, that description of her hog’s dying with cholera and the rescue reads like a—­a Greek tragedy in its simplicity.”