more behind Uncle Silas and the mules," I
answered cheerily, feeling perfectly capable of handling Baby Tillett and
his bag of biscuits, because the memory of the times his little head with
its tow fuzz had cuddled down on my linen smock, when I had carried him
back and forth for long visits in the barn to the Peckerwood Pup so his
mother could have a little vacation from his society, accelerated the
movement of the chant on the cardiac instrument in my breast. "He stays
hours and hours with me in a basket in the barn and is perfectly satisfied
with the biscuits."

"All the same I told Sallie I could make that dress by another pattern, and
you'd better sit with him a good distance during the show," said Mrs.
Addcock, as I finished shoe-topping Mamie and picked up my pink-lined white
sunbonnet, which had been a present from Mrs. Addcock herself and was
astonishingly frilly and coquettish emanating from such a source, and began
to depart.

"I'll take him on the other side of the auditorium," I answered, with
respect for advice that I knew must be good through experience.

And thus that pink and white, cooing, obstreperously hungry baby was made
an instrument of cruel fate and--

"Come over and see the little cap I've made Bennie so as to do you honor,"
called rosy Mrs. Tillett as I went down the street towards the grocery.

"I ain't got but six more yards of gingham to sew up for the two littlest,"
Mrs. Spain called cheerily as she looked past a whirring sewing-machine out
through a window that was wreathed with a cinnamon rose-vine in full bloom.

"Want any help?" I called from the gate, which was flanked on both sides by
blooming lilacs.

"No; you go on down to the store. Mr. Silas have brought out ten suits of
clothes for the men to pick from, and they are a-waiting for your taste.
Persuade Joe Spain to get that purple mixed. I do love gay colors, and
it'll go with my pink foulard."

The scenes into which I entered in the post-office-bank-grocery was comedy
in form, but serious in interpretation. The counter was piled high with
men's garments of every color that is bestowed upon woolen cloth in the
dyers' vats. Uncle Silas stood behind it with his glasses at a rampant
angle on his nose, and Aunt Mary stood in the center of a shuffling,
embarrassed, harassed group of farmers in overalls. Before her stood Bud,
attired in a light gray suit of aggressively new clothes, and she was using
him hard as a dummy upon whi