Don't you stir a step from here, Preachin's
goin' to begin again before you can get back."

Matty's right foot was on the step. Her right hand grasped the top of
the buggy, and her left was firmly held by a handsome youth whose
energies were divided between helping her into his "rig" and managing
his horse.

"You, Matty!" The second warning came in strong tones and with a
threatening accent.

Matty turned with a bird-like motion of the head. She darted a glance
and a smile over her shoulder; the glance was for her mother, the smile
for the young man. The latter had failed twice in Greek and Latin, but
he understood the language of the eye and lip, and the delicate pressure
of the girl's fingers on his. He, too, threw a glance and a smile
backward, and the next instant the two were spinning down the road in
the direction of the Iron Bridge.

There was a burst of good-natured laughter from the fathers. They
remembered the days of their youth and rather wished themselves in the
young man's place. "Pretty well done," chuckled Uncle Mose Bascom. "I've
always said that when it comes to holdin' a spirited horse and at the
same time helpin' a pretty girl into a buggy, a man ought to have four
hands, but Percival did the thing mighty well with jest two."

The young girls who lacked Matty's daring looked down the road with envy
in their eyes. How much better that ride in the wooded road to the
bridge than another dull sermon in that hot church! But the mothers of
the virtuous damsels smiled complacently, thanking God that their
daughters were not as other women's, and Ma Harris "walled" her eyes and
sighed piously.

"In my day," she said, "children honored their parents and obeyed 'em."

"No, they didn't," retorted Matty's mother, her face crimson with shame
and vexation. "Children never honored their parents in your day nor in
Moses's day, either. If they had, there wouldn't be but nine
commandments. Didn't your mother run off and marry, and haven't I heard
you say that that youngest boy o' yours was bringin' your gray hairs in
sorrow to the grave? Matty's headstrong, I know, but she ain't a bit
worse than other girls."

"That's so," said Sally McElrath, whose own girlhood gave her a fellow
feeling for the absent Matty. "I say, let the young folks alone. We all
were young once. For my part, I wish I was in Matty's place. Here, Dan,
can't you take me ridin' like you used to do before we got married?"

"I can take you