boy; they can't nothing
change him now. Shoofly is a girl, but Mis' Poteet didn't fool us this
time. Besides if he'd been a girl we wouldn't a-had him for nothing."

"Why, young man, you don't mean to discredit the girls, do you?"
demanded the Senator with a gallantly propitiating glance in the
direction of Jennie, Peggy and the rest of the bunch of assorted pink
and blue little calico petticoats. "Why could anything be finer than a
sweet little girl?" And as he spoke he rested his hand on Jennie's
tow-pigtailed head.

"Well, what's sweet got to do with it if we've got too many of 'em?"
answered the General in his usual argumentative tone. "Till little
Tucker comed they was three more girls than they was boys, and it
wasn't fair. Now they is just two more, and four of Sniffie's puppies
is boys, so that makes it most even until another one comes, what'll
just _have_ to be a boy." And the General cast a threatening glance
in the direction of the calico bunch as he issued this ultimatum to
feminine Sweetbriar.

"I'll ask Maw," murmured Jennie bashfully, but Miss Peggy turned up
her small nose and switched her short skirts scornfully as the men on
the porch laughed and the Senator emitted a very roar in his booming
bass.

"Well, well, we'll have to settle that later," he said in his most
propitiating urge-voter voice as he cast a smile over the entire
Swarm. "Hadn't you better carry the young man back to his mother? He
seems to be restless," he further remarked, taking advantage of a
slight squirm in which young Tucker indulged himself, though he was
not at all uncomfortable in Stonie's arms, accustomed as he was to
being transported in any direction at any time by any one of his
confreres. And with this skilful hint of dismissal the Senator bent
down and bestowed the imperative political kiss on the little pink
Poteet head, smattered one or two over Shoofly and Pete, landed one on
the tip of Jennie Rucker's little freckled nose and started them all
up the Road in good order as he turned once more to the men in the
store.

But the advent of the Swarm had served to remind the group of his
friends that the time for the roof-tree gathering was fast
approaching, and Mr. Crabtree was busy filling half-forgotten supper
orders for impatient waiters, while most of the men had gone up or
down the Road in the wake of the scattering Swarm. For a few minutes
the Senator and Everett were left on the porch steps alone.

"I hear