room. They all stayed until almost sunset, and almost everybody
in town dropped in during the afternoon to welcome me home, and ask me
where I was going to live. Jasper and Petunia hovering in the
background, the tea-tray out on the porch set with the silver and damask
all of them knew of old, and the appearance of having been installed
with the full approval of Cousin Martha and James and the rest of the
family, stopped the questions on their lips, and they spent the
afternoon much enlivened but slightly puzzled.

Time doesn't do much to people in a place like the Harpeth Valley, that
is out of the stream of modern progress; and most of my friends seem to
have just been sitting still, rocking their lives along in the greatest
ease and comfort.

Still, Mamie Hall has three more kiddies, which, added to the four she
had when I left, makes a slightly high, if charming, set of stair-steps.
Mamie also looks decidedly worn, though pathetically sweet. Ned was with
her, and as fresh as any one of the buds. Maternity often wilts women,
but paternity is apt to make men bloom with the importance of it. Ned
showed off the bunch as if he had produced them all, while Mamie only
smiled like an angel in the background.

A slight bit of temper rose in a flush to my cheeks, as I watched
Caroline Lellyett sit on the steps and feed cake to one twin and two
stair-steps with as much hunger in her eyes for them as there was in
theirs for the cake. Lee Greenfield is the responsible party in this
case, and she has been loving him hopelessly for fifteen years. Lots of
other folks wanted to marry her, but Lee has pinned her in the psychic
spot and is watching her flutter.

Polk departed in the trail of Nell Kirkland's fluffy muslin skirts,
smoldering dangerously, I felt. Nell has grown up into a most lovely
individual, and I felt uneasy about her under Folk's ministrations. Her
eyes follow him rather persistently. On the whole, I am glad Jane
committed me to this woman's cause. I'll have to begin to exercise the
biceps of Nell's heart--as soon as I get some strength into my own.

And after they had all gone, I sat for an hour out on the front steps of
my big, empty old house, and enjoyed my own loneliness, if it could be
called enjoying. I could hear the Petunia's happy giggle, answering
Jasper's guttural pleasantries, out on the cabin porch behind the row of
lilac bushes. I do hope that Petunia gets much and the right sort of
courting duri