them up with
one hand and struggling with his gingham shirt, the tail of which
bellowed out like a sail in the morning breeze as he sped along. And
in his wake came Tobe with a pan in one hand and a cup in the other.
"It's two calves, Tobe says, with just Mrs. Butter for the mother and
Sniffie beat her with three more puppies than two calves. It's sixteen
chickens and a passel of turkeys and we waked up Mr. Mark to tell him
and he said--" Stonie paused in the rapid fire of his announcement of
the morning news and then added in judicial tone of voice, as if
giving the aroused sleeper his modicum of fair play: "Well, he didn't
quite say it before he swallowed, but he throwed a pillow at Tobe and
pulled the sheet over his head and groaned awful. Aunt Viney was
saying her prayers when I went to tell her, and Aunt Mandy was taking
down her frizzles, but she stopped and gave Tobe some corn-bread for
the chickens and some pot-licker with meat in it for Sniffie. Can't
you come with me to see 'em now, Rose Mary? It won't be any fun until
you see em!" The General had by this time lined up in the doorway with
Uncle Tucker, and Tobe's black head and keen face peered over his
shoulder. The expression in all three pairs of eyes fixed on hers was
the same--the wild desire to make her presentation at the interesting
court Dame Nature was holding in the barn. A most natural masculine
instinct for feminine interpretive companionship when face to face
with the miracle of maternity.

"Just one more crock of milk to skim and I can go," answered Rose Mary
as she poised the skimmer over the last yellow surface down the line
of huge, brown, earthen bowls that in Harpeth Valley were known as
crocks. The milk-house was cool and clean and smelled of the fresh
cream lifted from the milk into the stone jars to be clabbered for the
to-morrow churning. And Rose Mary herself was a fresh, fragrant
incarnation of the spirit of a spring sun-dawn that had come over the
Ridge from Old Harpeth. Her merry voice floated out over the hillside
as she followed in the wake of Uncle Tucker, Stonie and Tobe, with the
provender for the new arrivals, and it made its way as a faint echo of
a dream through one of the vine-covered, gable windows of the Briars
and the effect thereof was well-nigh instantaneous.

Everett, after a hasty and almost as incomplete toilet as the one made
by the General in his excitement, arrived on the scene of action just
in time to witnes