her ground.
"I've got no objection to a frolic, Jude," he observed quietly, on
hearing the first mention of the matter, "but I wouldn't have no
play-party at this house. Hit's too handy to that cussed still of
Blatch's. A passel of fool boys is mighty apt to go over thar an' fill
theirselves up with corn whiskey, an' the party will just about end up in
a interruption."

He said no more, and Judith made no reply. Though ordinarily she would
have hesitated to go against her uncle's expressed wishes, her heart was
too much set on this enterprise to allow of easy checking. She made no
reply, but her campaign on behalf of the merrymaking went steadily on.

"I wonder you can have the heart to git up play-parties and the like when
Andy and Jeff's a-sufferin' in the jail," Pendrilla Lusk plucked up
spirit to say when the plan was first mooted to her.

Andy and Jeff, the wild young hawks, with the glamour upon them of
lawless, adventurous spirits, and bold, proper lovers, equally fascinated
and terrified the Lusk girls--timid, fluttering pair--and were in their
turn attracted to them by an inevitable law of nature.

"I don't see how it hurts the boys for us to have a dance," rejoined
Judith with asperity. "If we was all to set and cry our eyes out, it
wouldn't fetch 'em back on the mountain any quicker." Then with a teasing
flash, "I'll tell 'em when they git home what you said, though."

"Now, Jude, you're real mean," pleaded Cliantha Lusk sinking to her knees
beside Judith and raising thin little arms to clasp that young woman
around the waist. "You ain't a-goin' to tell them fool boys any sech
truck as that, air ye? Pendrilly jest said it for a sayin'. We'd love to
come to yo' play-party, whenever it is. I _say_ Andy and Jeff! Let 'em
git out of the jail the way they got in."

This is the approved attitude of the mountain virgin; yet Cliantha's
voice shook sadly as she uttered the independent sentiments, and
Pendrilla furtively wiped her eyes in promising to attend the
play-party.

All this was in April. By the time May came in, that dread of a belated
frost which amounts almost to terror in the farmer of the Cumberlands was
ended; the Easter cold and blackberry winter were over, and all the
garden truck was planted. Everybody began whole-heartedly to enjoy the
time of year. The leaves were full size, but still soft; the wind made
hardly any noise among them. In the pasture lot and fence corners near
the house, meadow