the big spring the other night. Looks like you are a pot
of honey, sure enough, child, that draws all your friends to settle around
you."

"No, it's the back-to-the-land vogue, and this is the most beautiful part
of the Harpeth Valley," I answered as I again began to depart with Bud and
the cabbage plants.

"Adam told me one night that he was going to prove that the Garden of Eden
was located right here. It was when your locusts were in full bloom and I
asked him if he had run down Eve anywhere. Are you sure you don't know when
he'll come back to see us all?" Aunt Mary's blue eyes danced with
merriment.

"No," I answered, and went hastily back to Bud and left her muttering to
herself, "Well, Silas _did_ say--"

All afternoon I stolidly planted the gray-green young cabbage sprouts
behind Bud's hoe and refused even to think about Bess's wedding-chest. But
at sunset I saw I must go into town to her dinner for the announcement of
her wedding, and wear one of my dresses that I had sold and then borrowed
back from her--or have a serious crisis in our friendship. I hadn't
strength for that, and I had hoped that the fun of it all would make noise
enough to wake some kind of echo in my very silent interior, but it didn't,
though there was a positive uproar when Owen brought the whole Bird
collateral family, who now have wings and tails and pin feathers, into the
dining-room and put them in the rose bed in the middle of the table so as
to hear his oratorical effort as expectant bridegroom.

"Why is it, Matt, that you have heart enough to drive me like mad out here
in the dark and not make me say a word?" I asked him as he brought me home
in the after-midnight hush.

"You've trained my heart into silence, Ann," he answered gently.

"No!" I exclaimed, for I couldn't bear the thought of Matthew's big heart
being silent too. Just then Polly, who had gone to sleep on the back seat,
fell off and had to be rescued. We put her out at home in a wilted
condition from pure good times, and then Matthew took me on up to Elmnest.
An old moon was making the world look as if mostly composed of black
shadows, and Matthew walked at my side out to the barn to see if all was
quiet and well.

"Why, what's the matter?" I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in
which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided. "Strike your cigar-lighter quick,
Matt."

As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank
to my knees with a cr