had loved him, my cousin, Uncle Tucker's son,
and I thought--I thought he had loved me. But when he went out into
the world one of the village girls, Granny Satterwhite's daughter, had
followed him and--yes, she had been his wife for all the time we
thought she was working in the city. They had been afraid--afraid of
Uncle Tucker and me--to acknowledge it. She was foolish and he
criminally weak. After his--his tragedy she came back--and nobody
would believe--that she was his wife. I found her lying on the floor
in the milk-house and though I was hurt, and hard, I took her into my
room--and in a few hours Stonie was born. When they gave him to me, so
little and helpless, the hurt and hardness all melted for ever, and I
believed her and forgave her and him. I never rested until I made him
come back, though it was just to die. She stayed with us a year--and
then she married Todd Crabtree and moved West. They didn't want
Stonie, so she gave him to me. When my heart ached so I couldn't stand
it, there was always Stonie to heal it. Do you think that heartaches
are sometimes just growing pains the Lord sends when He thinks we have
not courage enough?" And in the moonlight Rose Mary's tear-starred
eyes gleamed softly and her lovely mouth began to flower out into a
little smile. The sunshine of Rose Mary's nature always threw a bow
through her tears against any cloud that appeared on her horizon.

"I don't believe your heart ever needed any growing pains, Rose Mary,
and I resent each and every one," answered Everett in a low voice, and
he lifted one of Rose Mary's strong slim hands and held it close for a
moment in both his warm ones.

"Oh, but it did," she answered, curling her fingers around his like a
child grateful for a caress. "I was romantic--and--and intense, and I
thought of it as a castle for--for just one. Now it's grown into a
wide, wing-spreading, old country house in Harpeth Valley, with vines
over the gables and doves up under the eaves. And in it I keep
sunshiny rooms to shelter all the folks in need that my Master sends.
Yours--is on the south side--corner--don't you want your supper now?"

CHAPTER V

THE HONORABLE GID

"Now, Amandy, stick them jack-beans in the ground round side upwards.
Do you want 'em to have to turn over to sprout?" demanded Miss
Lavinia, as she stood leaning on her crotched stick over by the south
side of the garden fence, directing the planting of her favorite vine
that was