k
all that butter."

"Don't you know that love mixed in the bread of life makes it easy for
the woman to work a large batch for her family, Uncle Tucker?--and why
not butter? Will you talk to Mr. Newsome the next time he comes and
see what he thinks of the plan? I would tell him about it
myself--only I--I don't know why, but I don't--want to." Rose Mary
blushed and looked away across the Road, but her confusion was all
unnoticed by Uncle Tucker, who was busily lighting a second pipeful of
tobacco.

"Yes, I'll talk to him and Crabtree both about it," he answered
slowly. "I can't hardly bear the idea of your doing it, child, and if
it was just me I wouldn't hear tell of it, but Sister Viney and Sister
Amandy--moved they'd be like a couple of sprouts of their own
honeysuckle vine that you had pulled up and left in the sun to wilt.
Home was a place to grow in for women of their day, not just a-kinder
waiting shack between stations like it has come to be in these times
of women's uprising--in the newspapers."

"We don't get much new woman excitement out here in Harpeth Valley,
Uncle Tucker," laughed Rose Mary, glad to see him rise once more from
the depth of his depression to his usual philosophic level. "You
wouldn't call--er--er Mrs. Poteet a modern woman, would you?"

"Fly-away, Peggy Poteet is the genuine, original mossback and had
oughter be expelled from the sex by the confederation president
herself," answered Uncle Tucker as they both glanced down past the
milk-house where they saw the comely mother of the seven at her gate
administering refreshment in the form of bread and jam to all of her
own and quite a number of the other members of the Swarm, including
the General and the reclothed and shriven Tobe. "If there is another
Poteet output next April we'll have to report her," he added with a
laugh.

"But there never was a baby since Stonie like little Tucker," answered
Rose Mary in quick defense of the small namesake of whom Uncle Tucker
was secretly but inordinately proud.

"Yes, and I'm a-going to report you to the society of suppression of
men folks as a regular spiler, Rose Mary Alloway, if you don't keep
more stern than you are at present with me and Stonie, to say nothing
of all the men members of Sweetbriar from Everett clean on through
Crabtree down to that very young Tucker Poteet. You are one of the
women that feed and clothe and blush on men like you were borned a
hundred years ago and nobody had