ore this. What
they had against her was that she was always company wherever she
stayed. I tell you, give me a red-headed girl for managing!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Blessings Begin to Flow

"Well, I say it's a good thing these cousins of yours didn't decide
sooner to recognize you, Judy, because if they had we wouldn't have
had a single chair with a bottom left in it and the hooked rugs your
Grandmother Knight brought to Kentucky would have been nothing but
holes," declared Mrs. Buck. "I never saw so much company in my born
days and constant setting wears out chairs and constant rocking wears
out rugs.

"I don't say as it isn't nice to have company. I've been lonesome, in
a way, all my life, because my mother and father weren't much hands at
mixing, feeling themselves to be kind of different from the folks here
in Kentucky, and then I married young, and trouble came early, and my
poor dear husband's father wasn't the kind to attract the kind of
people my mother felt were our equals--but now, sakes alive, never a
day passes but it isn't cousin this and cousin that, coming to call
or ringing the 'phone or sending some kind of present to Miss Ann.

"What do they expect Miss Ann to do with a bushel of winter onions and
a barrel of potatoes and a keg of cider and a barrel of flour and six
sides of bacon, two jowls and three hams, besides two barrels of
apples and a hind quarter of the prettiest mutton I've seen for many a
day? This morning a truck drove up with enough wood to last us half
through the winter--the best kind of oak and pine mixed and all cut
stove length ready for splitting. That old Billy is mighty nice about
splitting the wood and bringing it in. He's the most respectful
colored person I ever saw and the only one I'd ever have around."

Mrs. Buck paused for breath and then proceeded: "While you were off
teaching to-day somebody Miss Ann called Cousin Betty Throckmorton
came to call and brought two daughters and a grandchild. I was mighty
sorry for them to miss you and I told them so. I think Mrs.
Throckmorton rather thought I ought to have said I was sorry for you
to miss her, but being as she had come to see you and not you to see
her and being as you are a sight better looking than she is or her
daughters or the grandchild, I put it the other way. Anyhow, she was
a very fine lady and couldn't say enough in praise of some of our
furniture.

"She asked me where the secretary in the parlor came from a