told you they wasn't worth shucks.
Are you a-going to reform?"

"I'll try when I get time," answered Rose Mary with a smile as she
bestowed both a fleeting kiss and the old hat on Uncle Tucker's
forelock over the wall. "Now I want to run in and make a few cup
custards, so I can save one for Mr. Mark when he gets home to-night.
He loves them cold. Little cooking attentions never spoil men, they
just nourish them. Anyway, what is a woman going to have left to do in
life if she sheds the hovering feathers she keeps to tuck her nesties
underneath?"

CHAPTER VII

THE SATSUMA VASE

"Well, howdy to-day, Mis' Poteet!" exclaimed Mrs. Rucker as she came
across her side yard and leaned over the Poteet fence right opposite
the Poteet back porch. "I brought you this pan of rolls to set away
for Mr. Poteet's supper. When I worked out the sponge looked like my
pride over 'em riz with the dough and I just felt bound to show 'em
off to somebody; I know I can always count on a few open mouths in
this here nest."

"That you can and thanky squaks, too, Mis' Rucker. I don't know
however I would feed 'em all if it wasn't for the drippings from your
kitchen," answered the placid and always improvident Mrs. Poteet as
she picked up Shoofly and came over to the fence, delighted at a
chance for a few minutes parley with the ever busy and practical Mrs.
Rucker. She balanced the gingham-clad bunch on its own wobbly legs
beside her, while through the pickets of the fence in greeting were
thrust the pink hands of Petie, the bond, who had followed in the wake
of his own maternal skirts. Shoofly responded to this attention with a
very young feminine gurgle of delight and licked at the chubby fist
thrust toward her like an overjoyed young kitten.

"Well, Monday is always a scrap day, so I try to kinder perk up my
Monday supper. Singing in the quire twict on Sunday and too much
confab with the other men on the store steps always kinder tires Mr.
Rucker out so he can't hardly get about with his sciatica on Monday,
and I have to humor him some along through the day. That were a mighty
good sermon circuit rider preached last night."

"Yes, I reckon it were, but my mind was so took up with the way Louisa
Helen flirted herself down the aisle with Bob on one side of her and
Mr. Crabtree on the other, I couldn't hardly get my mind down to
listening. And when she contrived Mr. Crabtree into the pew next to
Mis' Plunkett, as she moved down for